From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 22 01:01:55 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95BB816A4CE for ; Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:01:55 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp3.server.rpi.edu (smtp3.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E02C43D49 for ; Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:01:55 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp3.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i5M11sF4018449; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:01:54 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <20040621054406.GA927@VARK.homeunix.com> <200406210910.aa18808@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> <20040621091649.GA92422@iconoplex.co.uk> <20040621133003.GA96338@ussenterprise.ufp.org> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:01:53 -0400 To: Greg Black , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) Subject: Re: /bin/ls sorting bug? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:01:55 -0000 At 10:48 AM +1000 6/22/04, Greg Black wrote: > >The output of ls has never been good for reproduceable output >for identical data. It frequently leads to gigantic "diffs" >in periodic reports which makes them useless, as far as I can >tell. Take the following case: Hmm. I never thought much about that before. Perhaps we should use the output from the `stat' command for all of these tests in the periodic scripts. That way we could pick an exact format. Or maybe those scripts should take advantage of: LS_COLWIDTHS: If this variable is set, it is considered to be a colon- delimited list of minimum column widths. Unreasonable and insufficient widths are ignored (thus zero signifies a dynamically sized column). Not all columns have changeable widths. The fields are, in order: inode, block count, number of links, user name, group name, flags, file size, file name. Those might make the periodic checks more useful. Which scripts have this problem? In a very quick check, I only noticed an `ls' command in security/100.chksetuid. Anything else? Note that I am not volunteering to do the work, though... -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu