/bin/ls sorting bug?

[Oliver Fromme]

Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> wrote:
 > On 2004-06-21, Leo Bicknell wrote:
 > > While I think the particular sort order (current behavior vrs non
 > > nano patch vrs nano patch) is largely unimportant, I think consistency
 > > is very important.  It's quite common to do things like using diff
 > > on the output of commands like ls (indeed, I think several of the
 > > built in periodic scripts to this), and for that having a _reproduceable_
 > > order is important.
 > 
 > The output of ls has never been good for reproduceable output
 > for identical data.  It frequently leads to gigantic "diffs" in
 > periodic reports which makes them useless, as far as I can
 > tell.  Take the following case:
 > [...]
 > What we need is a canonical output form for this kind of use
 > that can be fed to a custom diff that can operate on individual
 > fields.

I always use "diff -Bb" for things like that, i.e. to
ignore any changes in whitespace.  Works perfectly fine.

Maybe someone should just add "-b" to the diff command
in those periodic scripts?

Best regards
   Oliver

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Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
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