[SOLVED] ls -Rd is broken

PsychoHermit · 09-01-2021, 08:37 PM

Hi Folks,

Running ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS amd64 on a 7 year old HP ENVY TouchScreen Notebook.

From the ls man page.

Code:

      -d, --directory
              list directories themselves, not their contents

     -R, --recursive
              list subdirectories recursively

glenn@Psycho:~/Desktop$ ls -Rd /
/
glenn@Psycho:~/Desktop$ ls -dR /
/

I believe I have stumbled on a bug in ls.

--glenn

GentleThotSeaMonkey · 09-01-2021, 09:06 PM

No, -d stops it from descending. It stops looking into contents.

Yes, adding Recurse=Descend to Don'tDecend is nonsensical

Sometimes, conflicting switches use the last (ps), but not here.

Look thru the source code for ls
(for simplicity, I use mll: https://github.com/mirror/busybox/bl...coreutils/ls.c line 1176

Code:

if (ENABLE_FEATURE_LS_RECURSIVE && (opt & OPT_d))
	option_mask32 &= ~OPT_R; /* no recurse if listing only dir */

Although obvious behavior, I guess you could try to file a RFE for the ls man page.

frankbell · 09-01-2021, 09:07 PM

This piqued my curiosity, so I just tested this. The command ls -R works independently, but there does appear to be an issue with ls -d, though my results differed slightly from OP's:

Code:

$ ls --directory
.
$ ls -d
.

This was on Mageia v. 8.

Update:

From the man page:

Quote:

-d, --directory
list directories themselves, not their contents

GentleThotSeaMonkey · 09-01-2021, 09:23 PM

@frankbell: I was editing in more, at the same time you posted

I do always enjoy your contributions!

allend · 09-01-2021, 10:20 PM

The issue is with the pattern.

Code:

# List subdirectories in the current directory
ls -Rd */
# List second level subdirectories in the current directory
ls -Rd */*/

If you want a listing of all subdirecories

Code:

tree -dfi

GazL · 09-02-2021, 10:45 AM

This is what the POSIX spec says:

Quote:

-d
Do not follow symbolic links named as operands unless the -H or -L options are specified. Do not treat directories differently than other types of files. The use of -d with -R or -f produces unspecified results.

IMO it would be more sensible for -R to be honoured, but the problem with "unspecified" things is that it becomes a matter of opinion as to what the correct thing to do is. One could even make the argument that it should operate like a find . -type d

In most cases you're probably better off just using 'find' anyway.

pan64 · 09-02-2021, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GazL

IMO it would be more sensible for -R to be honoured,

From my side I do not expect that. ls -ld <something> is used to list that something and nothing else. [again from my side] -R and -d are conflicting. From the other hand in recursive mode (-R) the -d flag is just pointless (or what should that mean?).

GazL · 09-02-2021, 11:35 AM

I think it essentially boils down to whether one thinks that '-d' should only apply to the command arguments, or the items that it recurses onto when -R is used.

Lots of ways at looking at this, which is why I wish they'd actually specified one.