On 11/18/2010 05:46 AM, Jari Aalto wrote: > Package: coreutils > Version: 8.5-1 > Severity: normal > > [Forwarded from http://bugs.debian.org/603895 ]
Thanks for the report. > > Manual page of ls(1) reads: > > -d, --directory > list directory entries instead of contents, and do not derefer- > ence symbolic links Which is generated from the 'ls --help' output. > None of these is helpful in understanding how the option is supposed > to work: > > ls -d The wording for -d may not mention it, but the wording at the very beginning of the --help and man page is clear that: | Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]... | List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). That is, 'ls -d' is the same as 'ls -d .', as required by POSIX, at which point you are listing the current directory as a file, and not the contents of the current directory. > ls -dR When listing directories as files (-d), no recursion (-R) takes place because no directories are encountered, just files. Again, this behavior is required by POSIX. What wording change, if any, can you propose for the --help output that would not make things too verbose for what is supposed to be a quick reference? > After lot of Google, a miracle command syntax is found: > > ls -d */ Yes, that says list all directories (and symlinks to directories) in the current directory, that don't start with leading ., as a file. > Please improve the documentation and give examples. Btw, the command > syntax "*/" is counterintuitive to rest of the ls(1) behavior: > > ls -a vs. ls -d Yes, comparing these two in the info pages would be a useful addition (although I'm not sure that we should bloat the already-long --help output for this). Could you propose a patch? -- Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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