10.1.7 Formatting the file names
These options change how file names themselves are printed.
- ‘-b’
- ‘--escape’
- ‘--quoting-style=escape’
- Quote nongraphic characters in file names using alphabetic and octal
backslash sequences like those used in C.
- ‘-N’
- ‘--literal’
- ‘--quoting-style=literal’
- Do not quote file names. However, with ls nongraphic
characters are still printed as question marks if the output is a
terminal and you do not specify the --show-control-chars
option.
- ‘-q’
- ‘--hide-control-chars’
- Print question marks instead of nongraphic characters in file names.
This is the default if the output is a terminal and the program is
ls.
- ‘-Q’
- ‘--quote-name’
- ‘--quoting-style=c’
- Enclose file names in double quotes and quote nongraphic characters as
in C.
- ‘--quoting-style=word’
- Use style word to quote file names and other strings that may
contain arbitrary characters. The word should
be one of the following:
- ‘literal’
- Output strings as-is; this is the same as the -N or
--literal option.
- ‘shell’
- Quote strings for the shell if they contain shell metacharacters or would
cause ambiguous output.
The quoting is suitable for POSIX-compatible shells like
bash, but it does not always work for incompatible shells
like csh.
- ‘shell-always’
- Quote strings for the shell, even if they would normally not require quoting.
- ‘c’
- Quote strings as for C character string literals, including the
surrounding double-quote characters; this is the same as the
-Q or --quote-name option.
- ‘escape’
- Quote strings as for C character string literals, except omit the
surrounding double-quote
characters; this is the same as the -b or --escape option.
- ‘clocale’
- Quote strings as for C character string literals, except use
surrounding quotation marks appropriate for the
locale.
- ‘locale’
-
Quote strings as for C character string literals, except use
surrounding quotation marks appropriate for the locale, and quote
'like this' instead of "like
this" in the default C locale. This looks nicer on many displays.
You can specify the default value of the --quoting-style option
with the environment variable QUOTING_STYLE. If that environment
variable is not set, the default value is ‘literal’, but this
default may change to ‘shell’ in a future version of this package.
- ‘--show-control-chars’
- Print nongraphic characters as-is in file names.
This is the default unless the output is a terminal and the program is
ls.