David, Thanks for you reply. I did a little poking around, based on your advice about LANG. (BTW, I do have v4.1). I set my LANG to the POSIX English setting (C) instead of American English (en_US), and now ls works like I know and love. I appreciate your reply and apologize for considering it a bug in ls. I may have to submit a patch to (someone) to correct the behavior when LANG=en_US. That's just very frustrating (where's README!! why is it with rpm!!). Until that's fixed, I think I'll try POSIX English.
Thanks. On Fri, 2002-11-15 at 05:04, David T-G wrote: > Matthew -- > > ...and then Matthew Vanecek said... > % > % The ls man page advertises that ls will "Sort entries alphabetically if > > What version of ls on what operating system, please? > > > % none of -cftuSUX" are specified. -a is supposed to show the . > % directories/files. > > Right. > > > % > % The bug is that the . files/directories are intermixed with the other > % files/directories, and that lower case and upper case files/directories > % are intermixed. To sort alphabetically, the . files must come first, > % followed by Upper case files, followed by lower case files. > % I cannot find a combination of options that outputs the expected > % listing. > > It sounds to me like you have a 4.1 or later version of fileutils (run > > ls --version > > to check) and do not have the proper localization environment variables > set for the results you want. I assure you that ls can be directed to > either fold or honor case, and I've never seen . and .. anywhere except > at the top of the listing. > > To make a painfully long story short, here is some paraphrased background > purely from memory (and thus subject to inaccuracy on many counts, but I > hope at least a start): > > - When *NIX utilities were first written, program behavior, user > interface, and error messages were all coded directly within the > program. Easy and simple, but no support for other languages. > > - When the POSIX standard was developed, support for internationalization > was designed in from the start, allowing hooks to language and locale > specs so that a program could talk to the user the way the user wants > to hear it. As of 4.1, the GNU FileUtils are fully POSIX compliant. > > - Unfortunately, certain operating system vendors (I will not mention > specifically one known for its crimson fedora, since I do not use it, > but it is my understanding that they are a very common source of this > problem) assume that their users will want a certain behavior -- say, > to fold case as in MS Windows Explorer -- and set the LANG* and LC_* > variables accordingly -- WITHOUT TELLING THE USER who is setting up the > system. > > - The GNU FileUtils team then gets the "bug report" when, in fact, all > they've done is write good code and move to a more universal standard. > > So who the hell decided that en_US would want to sort without case > sensitivity?? Damned Microsofties! ;-) > > -- Matthew Vanecek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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