Matthew Mittelstadt wrote:
> I noticed today some weird behavior with ls. After years and years of using
> UNIX-type systems, I have become pretty accustomed to 'ls -a' displaying all
> files beginning with a . first, and then "regular" files. today, I noticed
> that the files were being sorted alphabetically, and the . seemed to be
> getting ignored.
You must now be using a locale with a sort ordering that ignores
punctuation and folds case such as en_US.UTF-8 or other such locale.
What you are describing is the dictionary sort ordering that those
locales select. Personally I don't like it either but I was not
consulted. I think they confused people working with data on a
computer with people writing text about it.
Set your locale to C or POSIX to get a standard locale and sort
ordering.
Personally I am using the following locale variables.
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_COLLATE=C
This gives me UTF-8 support in most applications such as xterm but
still sorts using a normal sort ordering. (Note that the proper
unicode fonts must also be installed for this to be useful.)
> I am using etch (testing), and the coreutils version reported by 'ls
> --version' is 5.2.1.
GNU Coreutils 5.2.1 is the Sarge version. Version 5.97-5 is current
for Etch/Testing at this moment.
> there is no ls option I can find that modifies this
> behavior, nor can I find any documentation about it anywhere. two friends of
> mine are running sarge, one with ls 5.97, and one with ls 5.2.1. neither
> demonstrates this issue.
The info page on ls in Sarge lists this information:
info coreutils ls
(1) If you use a non-POSIX locale (e.g., by setting `LC_ALL' to
`en_US'), then `ls' may produce output that is sorted differently than
you're accustomed to. In that case, set the `LC_ALL' environment
variable to `C'.
Bob
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