sun
   microsystems              Systems Architecture Committee

_________________________________________________________________

Subject:       ls enhancements

Submitted by:  Jason King

File:          PSARC/2009/228/opinion.ms

Date:          April 29th, 2009

Committee:     Garrett D'Amore, James D. Carlson, Mark Carl-
               son, Sebastien Roy

Product Approval Committee:
               Solaris PAC
               solaris-pac-opinion@sun.com

1.  Summary

This project proposes to add enhancements to the ls(1) util-
ity  to  make  it  more  familiar to users coming from other
operating systems such as Linux.  Perhaps most notable among
those  enhancements  is  addition  of  support for colorized
listings using the --color argument.

2.  Decision & Precedence Information

The project is approved as specified in reference [1].

The project may be delivered in a patch release  of  the  ON
consolidation.

3.  Interfaces

The project exports the following interfaces.

_______________________________________________
|             Interfaces Exported             |
|_________________|________________|__________|
|Interface        |  Classification|  Comments|
|_________________|________________|__________|
|/usr/bin/ls      |  Committed     |          |
|/usr/xpg4/bin/ls |  Committed     |          |
|/usr/xpg6/bin/ls |  Committed     |          |
|_________________|________________|__________|

PSARC/2009/228               Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems

                           - 2 -

4.  Opinion

During review, two issues concerning the use of long options
(--option)  were  raised.  The first concern pertains to the
fact that not all long options have  a  corresponding  short
flag.   The members of the committee felt that since this is
also true of Linux interface being emulated, that  this  was
acceptable.

The second concern pertained to the fact that  for  some  of
those same options, the presence of an argument is optional.
The members present felt that while such an "optional  argu-
ment"  might be ambiguous for a short flag, for long options
there is no ambiguity (because of the separating  "="),  and
hence the behavior is acceptable.

5.  Minority Opinion(s)

None.

6.  Advisory Information

None.

7.  Appendices

7.1.  Appendix A: Technical Changes Required

None.

7.2.  Appendix B: Technical Changes Advised

None.

7.3.  Appendix C: Reference Material

Unless stated otherwise, path names are relative to the case
directory PSARC/2009/228.

3.   ls man page File: ls.txt

3.   Project proposal File: 20090408_jason.king

PSARC/2009/228               Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems