Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!metro!metro!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!imci4!imci5!pull-feed.internetmci.com!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!news.artisoft.com!not-for-mail From: mday@elbereth.org (Matt Day) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Is replacing /bin/sh with bash recommended? Date: 29 Mar 1996 04:55:27 -0700 Organization: none Lines: 46 Message-ID: <4jgj3f$lal@coyote.Artisoft.COM> References: <4j4fmh$5e8@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4j8ops$pfo@calypso.bns.com.au> <4jeim7$cde@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: coyote.artisoft.com In article <4jeim7$cde@park.uvsc.edu> Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> writes: > [.. argument over value of colorized ls ..] > >Colorized semantic constructs in an editor have their place. > >The output of the ls is not semantically associative, it is >alphabetically associative. > >Colorized ls, I find seriously distracting. The color is to >draw your eyes to what is nominally important to the mythical >"average user". This works. And draws my eyes away from the >important stuff. > >Since I have ASCII hardwired into my brain, I can visually >search a sorted list (which is what ls puts out) a hell of a >lot faster if it's *not* color. > >To a lesser extent, one would expect all English speakers, and >indeed, all educated people with small (fits in 8 bits) alphabets >to have their local collation sequence "hard wired". If they >don't, I'd certainly not hire them for any job involving a >dictionary or a phone book. I have found the colorized ls extremely useful for answering questions like "which files are executables in this directory?", "are there any subdirectories in this directory?", etc. I think that most people will agree that it is easier to tell if the output of ls contained any green text than if the output contained any files with a "*" following them (ala ls -F). If you use neither ls -F nor the colorized ls, you're forced to rely on your memory of the file modes to answer those questions, which I suspect would be much slower and much more prone to error, especially if you've never been in the directory before. I don't know why the color is so distracting for you, but I guess everybody is different. The color doesn't slow down my brain's ability to search the sorted output for a specific file. (Yes, I've used both styles of ls output long enough to be able to analyze the difference.) Like most anything, it takes a little while to get used to it. (In other words, to "hard wire" it into your brain.) Maybe you just haven't given it enough of a chance. I highly recommend the colorized ls. I think most people's brains are capable of using the color to speed up processing of the ls output. It is definitely not a useless, silly feature reserved for Unix newbies. Matt Day <mday@elbereth.org>