/bin/ls -C Question the ANSWER!

[Ken Latham]

> Ok, here is my question to the net.  Why does ls -C Sometimes
> NOT print across the screen?  Most of the time when I enter
> a ls -C I get a nice diretory like:
> News    fvps.c  h19     mbox    vps.c
> But some times a directory will list one per line on me.  What does
> ls make this decision on?

We have been having this problem for a while now,  it suddenly struck me
the other day.  When ever I changed names of files created by vnews the
problem went away... AHA I thought ... control charaters in the names
^h's maybe not getting filtered out and causing problems with an unprepared
"ls" command.

	Alas, This wasn't it .... od -c revealed the problem

every time a 14 character name showed up "ls" would list one per line.
I get rid of the 14 character names and all is fine.

Conclusion:

	"ls" believes that 14 character names won't fit well across the
page...so he lists 1/line.  actually 5 16-charater names will fit ....
this would work for 14-char name, a 1-char designator and 1-space separator
( who ever wrote ls must not be very good at math :-)  )

				This is under sysv on 3b[25],


			Ken Latham, AT&T-IS (via AGS Inc.), Orlando , FL

			uucp: ihnp4!bsdpkh!latham