On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 13:00 -0400, William Case wrote: > Hi Patrick; > > To continue as a conversation, but not belabour the point. > > On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 11:14 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > > On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 03:59 -0400, William Case wrote: > > > Hi Tim; > > > On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 16:58 +0930, Tim wrote: > > > > On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 10:35 -0400, William Case wrote: > > > > > It seems illogical, that 'ls' wouldn't have a flag that just shows > > > > > files when it has a flag for directories. > > > > > > > > Though that flag "ls -d" has a completely different purpose (show > > > > directory names, rather than go into them and list their contents). > > > > > > > True. But whatever its purpose, it does give me a list of directory > > > names. > > > > In fact it lists *all* its arguments as usual (the default being ".", as > > always), except that those which are directories are not listed > > recursively. It doesn't "give a list of directory names", unless that's > > what the arguments happen to be. > > > > Yea, I know. But by reading the ls man page and a couple of experiments > I was able to get ls -d ./* to print a list of the directories to stout. "ls -d ./*" is exactly the same as "ls -d *", which in turn is the same as "ls". Try sending the output of each of these to a temp file (not in the current directory of course :-) and running diff on them. > > There are no flags to ls which mean "ignore any arguments which belong > > to this class of object". > > > And isn't that a shame. That's a matter of opinion of course, but many people think ls already has too many options. As the old saying goes, when your subroutine takes 13 arguments, you probably forgot a few. > > > All that I am saying is that it would be handy to have a simple util > > > that listed file names. > > > > If you want to filter out directories, use grep, as several people have > > pointed out. That's the Unix Way (tm). > > But why make people use grep ( a whole to learning curve; particularly > if you are new) when I simple option could do it for you. Someone who uses the Unix Shell but doesn't know about grep is working with one hand behind his back. I don't mean he needs to know all of grep's more exotic options, but the basic usage is, well, basic. > > > > > I suggest 'ls' because it is probably the most > > > used and first learned listing utility and therefore would be the place > > > to have it. It would be useful to beginners (particularly those who do > > > not yet have any idea what a regexp is) and for script writing or piping > > > to sed, awk, grep or a new file (or for appending). > > > > Said beginners need to learn that *directories are files* (and devices > > are files, named pipes are files, etc.). This is an important concept > > which should not be hidden. > > I don't limit my remarks to "Said beginners", I think the option would > be useful to practised Linux users too. But remembering the > befuddlement, confusion and fluster I felt as a new user did bring the > issue back to mind. Here's another oldie: Windows is easy to learn, but Unix is easy to use. Two entirely different things. Plus of course you have the GUI tools *as well* these days. > Nor do I think it is the place of any Linux distribution to decide when > and what users should learn. To me, that's M$ type of thinking. > Perhaps some users can't remember as far back as when they first started > using Linux or Unix, or perhaps they have always had an intuitive grasp > of how computers work. We all had to learn this stuff. IMHO the fact that it's now second-nature to us is evidence of good design. The original Unix designers had good taste, meaning they knew what to leave out. Unfortunately a lot of that's been lost over the years, but the core system is still pretty much the same. If it weren't, I'd be using a Mac. > Or, maybe, there is just the natural old pro desire to force an > unnecessarily onerous initiation period on beginners. Is it better to learn to drive with a manual or automatic gearbox? I insist that my kids learn with a stick shift, even if they later drive automatics, and it as nothing to do with wanting them to suffer. > In lieu of providing an additional option to 'ls' coreutils could > provide an 'lsf' command that would print the simple information that is > desired. I didn't jump into this thread because it was something I > REALLY NEEDED, but because I thought it might be useful to others. It's easy to write a Shell one-liner that *uses* the existing ls, and hence has all its options as well. A separate command for this single purpose is just teeth-gratingly wrong. poc -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
