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

[Nicolas Williams]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 07:21:09PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Don Cragun <don.cragun at sun.com> wrote:
> 
> > >The syntax "-/" seems strange to me but I guess no stranger than what we 
> > >already have with "-@".  When I saw the title of the case and this new 
> > >option I first match this to "dir /p" from MS-DOS era.
> > >
> > >As an aside had I been choosing a non alphanumeric char for this I would 
> > >have picked '$' since it has to me some connection to system from other 
> > >OSes that I've used.  But as I said just an aside.
> >
> > The project team considered -$, but quickly abandonded it due to the
> > special handling users have to perform to keep '$' from being evaluated
> > by the shells as a variable expansion request.
> 
> From the other replies it seems to be obvious that -% is in the same state as it
> nees quoting by at least 2 shells.

Neither -$ nor -% need quoting if followed by whitespace, not in any
shell that I use anyways, but if you try -$altr then things break.
Which shell uses % in such a way?

Also, @, ! and + are special in KSH as well, when followed by an open
parenthesis (they're not the only ones, of course, but the others, ? and
*, are special by their lonesomes).

Nico
--