On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Ken Hornstein wrote:
> I'd like to point out that this feature of GNU ls is extremely evil.  Why?
> Because it assumes that ANSI color-setting codes work on the tty you're
> using.  If you happen to use a terminal that locks up when sent ANSI term
> escape sequences, this really really _really_ sucks.

Test for your terminal type in your .profile or .cshrc and set your 
ls alias with our without the color option depending on what your 
terminal type is.  Sheesh.

> (I happen to own a terminal that does this.  While I fully admit it's a
> bogus terminal, it only cost me $10, and it works just fine).

Yep, nothing wrong with a cheap terminal.

> A friend of mine had one of these terminals and was using it with a local
> ISP when they decided to "upgrade" the system ls to GNU ls.  He was rather
> unhappy to discover that all of a sudden, his terminal locked up when he
> ran "ls".

Making the option the default behavior is bad.  I use a copy of FreeBSDs 
ls that has color support hacked in.  The color option is a command
line switch.

> That being said, there's no reason you can't just compile the GNU fileutils
> and replace the NetBSD ls.  But it's highly unlikely that it will be the
> default (this is coming from someone who is not a NetBSD core member, so
> take this with a grain of salt).

Exactly.  It would be nice to have the primative color support in the
FreeBSD (and NetBSD I suppose) in the system by default, but in the
end, its really something that should be an external package.

> (To be honest, "ls -F" works for me, and it doesn't hose up my terminal,
> either :-) ).

Ah, but XTerms look so much prettier with color... :)



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