fpb@sunpitt.east.sun.com (Frank P. Bresz) (01/07/90)
Hello,
There has been a question and some confusion about the use of
dired-listing-switches. It is in the area of use -F (the unix switch to
get '/' or '*' tacked on to the end of filenames to indicate their type).
The problem is quickly mentioned in dired.el :
;(defvar dired-listing-switches "-al"
; "Switches passed to ls for dired. MUST contain the 'l' option.
;CANNOT contain the 'F' option.")
For those who don't quite understand why here is a quickie explanation.
If it is out of date I am sorry I am still using Emacs 18.52
When Emacs looks for the file name to try and visit it would not be
able to tell if the '/' or '*' should be part of the file name or not. Now
you might say that if it sees these characters it should delete them. But
then you wouldn't be able to visit a file with a '*' or '/' in it. Now I
have never seen a file in unix with an embedded '/' but I have seen
embedded '*'.
Of course it could try and open the file and if it failed
go ahead and try to eliminate the * or / but I that would make several
other things inside the dired package uglier. Perhaps someday, any
volunteers...
Frank P. Bresz }*{
InterNet : wpmstr!fbresz@sunpitt.east.sun.com
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1740 Golden Mile Highway
Monroeille, PA 15146jym@APPLE.COM (01/07/90)
Obviously what we need is a GNU ls, with its own switches. <_Jym_>