> For serious applications, you have to build TUIs assuming the worst - that the user has no colors or special keys.
Realistically, what are the chances of this happening nowadays and how worth is it supporting such users?
> That would probably break a lot of scripts.
If an icon would break scripts, so would having colors, but it doesn't since ls knows when it outputs to a terminal or to a pipe and adjusts the output accordingly. But this misses the point, it could be another commands like vls (visual ls) or whatever, the point is the ability to use more than ASCII text.
> I just alias "l" to "ls -l" so I can see the permissions (which has a "d" to indicate directories).
An icon is more distinguishable from a single letter and using the -l view would not take advantage of any horizontal space you have.
Realistically, what are the chances of this happening nowadays and how worth is it supporting such users?
> That would probably break a lot of scripts.
If an icon would break scripts, so would having colors, but it doesn't since ls knows when it outputs to a terminal or to a pipe and adjusts the output accordingly. But this misses the point, it could be another commands like vls (visual ls) or whatever, the point is the ability to use more than ASCII text.
> I just alias "l" to "ls -l" so I can see the permissions (which has a "d" to indicate directories).
An icon is more distinguishable from a single letter and using the -l view would not take advantage of any horizontal space you have.