latham@bsdpkh.UUCP (Ken Latham) (02/23/86)
> Ok, here is my question to the net. Why does ls -C Sometimes > NOT print across the screen? Most of the time when I enter > a ls -C I get a nice diretory like: > News fvps.c h19 mbox vps.c > But some times a directory will list one per line on me. What does > ls make this decision on? We have been having this problem for a while now, it suddenly struck me the other day. When ever I changed names of files created by vnews the problem went away... AHA I thought ... control charaters in the names ^h's maybe not getting filtered out and causing problems with an unprepared "ls" command. Alas, This wasn't it .... od -c revealed the problem every time a 14 character name showed up "ls" would list one per line. I get rid of the 14 character names and all is fine. Conclusion: "ls" believes that 14 character names won't fit well across the page...so he lists 1/line. actually 5 16-charater names will fit .... this would work for 14-char name, a 1-char designator and 1-space separator ( who ever wrote ls must not be very good at math :-) ) This is under sysv on 3b[25], Ken Latham, AT&T-IS (via AGS Inc.), Orlando , FL uucp: ihnp4!bsdpkh!latham