LinuxQuestions.org - ls > temp has extra characters

I have a series of log files I'd like to scroll through all at once instead of catting or lessing each one. So I'm thinking:

ls -1tc |xargs -l1 cat |less

This gives a bunch of errors like foo.file not found. So I tried to simplify. (I know logging in as root is generally a Bad Thing.)

Code:

[root@localhost log]# ls -1tc |tee temp

temp

htm/

dptrace-1.txt

dptrace-2.1

dptrace-2.2

dptrace-2.txt

[root@localhost log]# cat temp

temp

htm/

dptrace-1.txt

dptrace-2.1

dptrace-2.2

dptrace-2.txt

[root@localhost log]# vi temp

^[[00m^[[00mtemp^[[00m

^[[00;34mhtm^[[00m/

^[[00mdptrace-1.txt^[[00m

^[[00mdptrace-2.1^[[00m

^[[00mdptrace-2.2^[[00m

^[[00mdptrace-2.txt^[[00m



[2]+  Stopped                vi temp

[root@localhost log]# ls -1tc |xargs -l1 cat

cat: temp: No such file or directory

cat: htm/: No such file or directory

cat: dptrace-1.txt: No such file or directory

cat: dptrace-2.1: No such file or directory

cat: dptrace-2.2: No such file or directory

cat: dptrace-2.txt: No such file or directory

So of course cat is failing; the temp file has all these wierd characters. But why does vi show them, and not cat? And why does ls > temp add all those extra characters?

I'm also confused about why the temp file that is just being created shows up during the ls command.

The linux box is RHEL 5.1, but I'm using Putty to ssh in. Putty with XMing is pretty dang useful!