Hi Marko; On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 21:05 +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 03:59:30 -0400, > > William Case <billlinux@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > All that I am saying is that it would be handy to have a simple util > > > that listed file names. 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). > > There is just one thing that baffles me here --- isn't a directory also a file? > Given that, what you ask for is not an option to list only files, it is an > option to list everything except directories. In other words, you are asking > for an option that says "list the directory contents, but omit certain > things". > > The more appropriate way to do this is to use some form of filtering. Such a > thing does not naturally fit into a list of options of ls, IMHO. What you > actually do is perform two operations here --- list the contents, and then > filter it to display only some subset. Two operations should be done using two > commands, the Unix Way. And the filtering approach gives you more flexibility > what file types to filter out. For example, is /dev/sda a file or a directory? > How would this hypothetical ls option behave in this case? List it or not? > > There are not *just directories and files* on the system. There are > *just files*. And these files might be regular files, directories, devices, > stdin/stdout, and who knows what else. You are proposing to add a single > option to ls in order to filter out one of these types. Why only this one type? > Put a whole bunch of options in ls which could list only regular files, or only > character devices, or only hidden directories or... Or better yet, don't put > any of that crap into ls, but pipe the ls output and filter it using a more > appropriate tool. > > The completely analogous situation is with paging the output of ls. When I > first used ls on a directory with lots of files, the natural idea for me was to > look into its man page to find some option that would split the output into > several screens and display them one by one. I failed to find such an option. > After some digging, I found that this is done via a pipe to less: > > ls | less > > And then after some learning I understood that this is actually the better way > to do it (more powerful, more flexible, more clean, more useful). The same > situation is here with listing only non-directories. > > The main problem is not lack of functionality, but that Windows-converts have > a frame of mind that makes a distinction between "directory" and "file" > concepts, and believe these concepts are fundamentally different and non- > overlapping. That is exactly where I was coming from and believe that that defines the problem the original poster had. > This is a Bad Idea, and it seems more appropriate to educate > users than to add options to ls which make it do things it is not designed > for. > > Just remember: "Do one simple thing and do i well." ;-) Marko, you have given the best explanation and counter argument yet to this post. However, I could tell you several (delightful) horror stories of hours and hours I wasted when I first came to Linux from Windows. I bet there are others who have had an equalling trying experience. Don't get me wrong, Linux is by far the best operating system. But I still find myself from time to time trying to solve problems by using 'MicroSoft Intuition'. That usually means looking for a complex answer when, in Linux, a simple answer will do. In any case, I always keep my eye open for the newbies for whom 'intuition' is not working. They often get dismissed as if they should know better. I guess that all I was proposing was giving people some transitional tools. To me, a regular file will always be a file different from the others. -- Regards Bill Fedora 11, Gnome 2.26.3 Evo.2.26.3, Emacs 23.1.1 -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
