Interactive scripts (back on topic for once) [was Re: The "loop and a half"]

[Paul Moore]

On 6 October 2017 at 13:22, Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> Yep. My real beef with ls is multi-column vs single-column.
>> Paul
>
> You don't think multiple columns in interactive mode is useful? I'm surprised,
> because I find it invaluable.

Interactively, I use ls -l 99.9% of the time. When I use raw ls, the
column format is OK, but the fact that the number of columns varies
depending on the filename length is really annoying (one really long
filename can really mess the layout up).

> I would hate for `ls` to default to printing everything in one long column. I
> suppose I could define an alias, but then every time I'm on a different
> computer or running as a different user, I'd end up with the annoying default
> single column again.

And that's precisely why carefully defining the defaults is both
crucial and hard :-)

I don't think the designers of ls necessarily got it wrong. But I'm
one of the (small, presumably) group who find it sub-optimal. That's
OK - you can't please all of the people all of the time and all that
:-)

What *really* bugs me is colour settings that default to dark blues on
a black background. Someone, presumably an admin who set the system
up, worked on a light-background system, and defined defaults that are
good for them. And which are illegible for every single one of the
actual users who have black-background ssh clients. Add the fact that
I work on shared admin accounts, where setting non-default preferences
is considered an antisocial act (even when they are "better" ;-)) and
I spend my life squinting at screens, or typing "unalias ls" to remove
the --color setting. Luckily (for everyone who has to listen to me
rant), this is "just" annoyingly badly configured systems, and not
baked in program defaults.

Paul