Re: [TUHS] A question about ls(1)

[Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>]

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On Sat, Apr 27, 2019 at 8:26 AM Anthony Martin <ality@pbrane.org> wrote:

> From at least V2 to V6, the ls(1) command would not
> show directory entries whose names began with a '.'
> unless the -a flag was supplied.
>
> This was changed in V7: only the directory entries
> for "." and ".." would be skipped by default.
>

gnu ls does not follow this convention. The system V sources one can find
on the internet have the curious code:

#define DOTSUP  1
...
                        if (aflg==0 && dentry->d_name[0]=='.'
# ifndef DOTSUP
                                && (dentry->d_name[1]=='\0' ||
dentry->d_name[1]=='.'
                                && dentry->d_name[2]=='\0')
# endif
                                )  /* check for directory items '.', '..',
                                   *  and items without valid inode-number;
                                   */
                                continue;

which is the V7 behavior ifdef'd out.


> All further versions of Research Unix retain the
> convention of V7 and Plan 9 ultimately made it
> unnecessary. However, BSD and its descendants did
> not follow suit. Instead, they continued behaving
> like V6 with an additional -A flag to emulate V7.
>

This has been the BSD convention since at least 4BSD :)

But I find this interesting, since the 8th edition was based on BSD 4.1c I
thought....

And system III and later all have the above code.


> Was the initial behavior intentional or just a
> matter of expediency?
>
> Who made the change and what was their motivation?
> Was it a reaction to the intentional hiding of what
> came to be known as "dot files"?


It looks like, from the source, to be a blip in V7.

Warner

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