coreutils: Formatting the file names
10.1.6 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Do not quote file names.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.
‘shell-escape’
Like ‘shell’, but also quoting non-printable characters using
the POSIX proposed ‘$''’ syntax suitable for most shells.
‘shell-escape-always’
Like ‘shell-escape’, but quote strings 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 ‘shell-escape’ when the
output is a terminal, and ‘literal’ otherwise.
‘--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’.
Info Catalog
coreutils: Formatting file timestamps
coreutils: ls invocation