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ls
Raised as a usability problem by 17 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 15 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Plain output without colour makes files and permissions hard to findUnreviewed
20112026- Colored output makes directory names fuzzy and hard to find files2023-05-28
- Unexplained colour on files, user couldn't tell what the colour meant2021-10-27
- Dark blue items in ls output are often unreadable2019-01-14
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 17 complaints
- Default colored ls makes listing large NFS directories hang for minutes or hours2026-04-29
- Listing hides dotfiles unless the user asks twice, which is confusing and annoying2023-10-10
- Colored output makes directory names fuzzy and hard to find files2023-05-28
- No config-file or env var to set default sort order; must pass it on every command line2022-12-22
- Unexplained colour on files, user couldn't tell what the colour meant2021-10-27
- Users must wait for ls to read the whole directory before any results appear2021-08-29
- Ls is unusable on a directory with tens of millions of files2021-08-16
- Plain ls fails on huge directories because sorting takes too long2021-08-16
- Dark blue items in ls output are often unreadable2019-01-14
- Adds unwanted quote marks around filenames with spaces, and the fix must be looked up on every machine2018-09-20
- Ls colours are hard to distinguish against the terminal background, costing time2018-06-06
- Plain ls output without colour makes it hard to find files and permissions2017-08-03
- Output changes format when piped to grep, so the behaviour is confusing to beginners2015-09-11
- Listing shows all subdirectories by default, making it hard to find one file2012-06-13
- Default colors make ls output near-unreadable in common terminals, and the colors are opaque to users2012-05-25
- Too many switches overwhelm new users reading the man page2012-05-25
- Usage line is dense and cryptic, so it doesn't help the user fix the error2011-08-05