Lennart Poettering wrote: > [Second version of the patch, makes this feature optional with --fancy-chars] > > Diego Pettenò complained that "ls -l" doesn't use the UTF-8 arrow > character to show where symlinks point to. This tiny patch fixes that. > With this applied the character is used when the CODESET is UTF-8 > otherwise we fall back to the traditional "->" arrow. > > This is only enabled if --fancy-chars is passed as argument. > > Ah, "ls -l" is so much prettier now! > > For verification: > > http://pastie.org/573270
Thanks for the patch. However, I'm inclined not to add the functionality even via a separate option, because: - The bar for adding a new option to ls is very high; you'd need more justification than "someone complained" or "it's prettier, now." - It's easy to get nearly the same effect with a simple filter, as Pádraig suggested. (of course, a naive filter fails if a file name contains " -> ", but the end result is solely for human consumption, not for mechanical parsing, so that's ok) Just by the way, I compared your arrow and the one Pádraig used in his example: $ printf 'a -> b\n' a -> b $ printf 'a \xe2\x86\x92 b\n' a → b $ printf 'a \u25aa\u25b6 b\n' a ▪▶ b I found the 1-column-wide arrow to be disconcertingly similar to a hyphen, when viewed via a 7-point (admittedly small) font in a gnome-terminal. Compare to underscore and hyphen: $ printf 'a _\xe2\x86\x92- b\n' a _→- b As usual, if you come up with more justification, or many people clamor for this option, we will revisit the decision.