Formatting the file names (GNU Coreutils 9.0)

10.1.6 Formatting the file names

These options change how file names themselves are printed.

‘-b’ ‘--escape’ ‘--quoting-style=escape’

Quote nongraphic characters in file names using alphabetic and octal backslash sequences like those used in C.

‘-N’ ‘--literal’ ‘--quoting-style=literal’

Do not quote file names. However, with ls nongraphic characters are still printed as question marks if the output is a terminal and you do not specify the --show-control-chars option.

‘-q’ ‘--hide-control-chars’

Print question marks instead of nongraphic characters in file names. This is the default if the output is a terminal and the program is ls.

‘-Q’ ‘--quote-name’ ‘--quoting-style=c’

Enclose file names in double quotes and quote nongraphic characters as in C.

‘--quoting-style=word’

Use style word to quote file names and other strings that may contain arbitrary characters. The word should be one of the following:

‘literal’: Output strings as-is; this is the same as the --literal (-N) option.
‘shell’: Quote strings for the shell if they contain shell metacharacters or would cause ambiguous output. The quoting is suitable for POSIX-compatible shells like bash, but it does not always work for incompatible shells like csh.
‘shell-always’: Quote strings for the shell, even if they would normally not require quoting.
‘shell-escape’: Like ‘shell’, but also quoting non-printable characters using the POSIX proposed ‘$’ syntax suitable for most shells.
‘shell-escape-always’: Like ‘shell-escape’, but quote strings even if they would normally not require quoting.
‘c’: Quote strings as for C character string literals, including the surrounding double-quote characters; this is the same as the --quote-name (-Q) option.
‘escape’: Quote strings as for C character string literals, except omit the surrounding double-quote characters; this is the same as the --escape (-b) option.
‘clocale’: Quote strings as for C character string literals, except use surrounding quotation marks appropriate for the locale.
‘locale’: Quote strings as for C character string literals, except use surrounding quotation marks appropriate for the locale, and quote 'like this' instead of "like this" in the default C locale. This looks nicer on many displays.

You can specify the default value of the --quoting-style option with the environment variable QUOTING_STYLE. If that environment variable is not set, the default value is ‘shell-escape’ when the output is a terminal, and ‘literal’ otherwise.

‘--show-control-chars’

Print nongraphic characters as-is in file names. This is the default unless the output is a terminal and the program is ls.