bug#952: 23.0.60; cons DIRNAME arg to `dired' makes it ignore SWITCHES arg

bug#952: 23.0.60; cons DIRNAME arg to `dired' makes it ignore SWITCHES arg

[Drew Adams]

emacs -Q
 
M-: (dired '("c:/some/dir" "file1.el" "file2.el") "-lC")
 
where c:/some/dir is a directory containing files file1.el and file2.el.
 
The SWITCHES arg is ignored.
 
I've searched the doc and code but found no mention of this. The only
doc I've found for the `dired' args is the doc string, and according
to that the SWITCHES arg should always be respected.
 
I'm using MS Windows, so ls-lisp.el is involved here. I don't know
whether the same thing happens on GNU/Linux. However, switches such as
-lC and others that are ignored in this context work fine for (dired
"c:/some/dir" "-lC") and (dired "c:/some/dir/file*.el" "-lC"). 
 
I see no logical reason why the switches, or at least most of them,
shouldn't work also for an explicit list of files.
 
This same bug exists in Emacs 22, 21, and 20.
 

In GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2008-08-29 on LENNART-69DE564
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.4) --no-opt --cflags -Ic:/g/include
-fno-crossjumping'
 

bug#952:

[Joshua Branson]

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I'm using Parabola GNU/Linux.  My emacs is version 24.5-4.


Have you tried updating to a newer version of Emacs?  The latest stable version of Emacs is 24 (Emacs 25 will soon be released soon).  I'm not a developer of Emacs, but if you are using an outdated version, the developers of Emacs will probably prioritize fixing bugs on newer versions of Emacs.


And don't -lC naturally conflict?  Try running both ls -lC and ls -Cl in a terminal.  In my terminal, it does what the last flag says.  So l -lC displays the output in columns and l -Cl looks just like l -l.


I've done


(dired '("~/" ".bashrc"  ".bash_profile" "-l")  ;; shows the long format


(dired '("~/"  ".bashrc"  ".bash_profile" "-lg")  ;;shows the long format w/o displaying the file owner.


And it worked as expected.


Can you give me a few more examples where dired is ignoring flags?

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