/bin/ls vs .dotted files

[Matthew Dillon]

    I'm less interested in what people thought was correct 30 years
    ago, or even 10 years ago, and more interested in what makes the
    most sense today.  The reality is that if someone is just doing a
    basic 'ls' ungarnished with options they probably aren't interested in
    dot files.  It's a convenience that wasn't imagined 30 years ago
    because one didn't have ten thousand applications installed 30 years
    ago.

    It looks like older versions of linux had the root/-A behavior, but
    newer versions do not. At least for gnu ls.  In fact, considering how
    much 'ls' has forked over the years, I don't think a historical view
    is particularly helpful any more.

    I'm leaning towards making root and non-root behavior the same for ls,
    meaning not turning -A on for root by default.  Insofar as I can tell,
    that is where the larger community has been heading over the years.
    Even in FreeBSD where -A is still turned on for root, there were clearly
    enough people who wanted to turn the blasted thing off that they added
    a -I option.

						-Matt