ls(1) new command line options '-/' and '-%': CIFS system attributes support [PSARC/2007/394 FastTrack timeout 07/11/2007]

[Darren J Moffat]

Don Cragun wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:17:06 +0100
>> From: Darren J Moffat <Darren.Moffat at sun.com>
>>
>> Project team:
>>
>> I really like that the project team chose to extend ls(1) rather than 
>> doing what other systems did by introducing an additional tool, 
>> particularly given that ls(1) can fully display acls now.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>> Was consideration given to just extending the meaning of -V so that it 
>> also displayed system attribute info as well as the verbose ACL ?
> 
> Yes.  The project team chose not to do that because it could break
> scripts that are using ls to process ACLs.

Is the syntax of the -v an -V ACL display defined in PSARC/2006/043 
actually intended to be and given a taxonomy that allows for parsing ? 
That arc case doesn't actually say what stability the output has.

Also given that it is really still quite new and currently only applies 
to ZFS and NFSv4 anyway (for -V) I think the risk of extending it is 
minimal and would be my preferred outcome.

One has to know what the underlying filesystem actually is to know what 
output style you will get from -v and -V (UFS,TMPFS,NFSv3 will give very 
different output than NFSv4 and ZFS) means that parsing the output of 
ls(1) is very complex and IMO unlikely to be reliable anyway.

-- 
Darren J Moffat