Re: ls -F Behavior

[Jim Meyering]

"David L. Craig" <address@hidden> wrote:
>     I'm running fileutils 4.1-10 under Debian unstable and
>     noticed the treatment of the -F flag changes when used
>     FILE specifications.  Given:
...

>     now follow the symlink to the directory (but not the
>     file) and cause me to think the type of symdir is d,
>     not l.
>
>     I cannot recall if this is changed behavior or not.
>     I have used ls -F for over a decade and have never
>     had my nose rubbed in this before.  Has something
>     changed?  Is this POSIX-compliant behavior?

Thanks for the report.
Although Debian's unstable does include some of the changes
from recent test releases, it is based on 4.1 and doesn't have
the relevant ls changes.

I believe the behavior shown below is POSIX-compliant.

The latest test release is here:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.1.8.tar.gz

Using it, I get this:

  $ mkdir dir; touch file; ln -s file symfile; ln -s dir symdir
  $ command ls -F
  dir/  file  symdir@  symfile@
  $ command ls -F *
  file  symdir@  symfile@

  dir:
  $ command ls -Fd *
  dir/  file  symdir@  symfile@