On Mar 17 10:14:36, Nick Bender wrote:
quoted text
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 9:44 AM, J.C. Roberts <list-jcr@designtools.org>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:02:19 +0100 Jan Stary <hans@stare.cz> wrote:
> >
> >> Anyway, what really is the purpose of index.txt being there then?
> >> To tell the times and sizes?
> >
> > To break scripts? ;)
> >
> > To put it bluntly, index.txt seems pointless, or more likely, there is
> > some super double secret reason for it to still exist that I simply
> > don't know...
> >
> > My only *GUESS* is, some mirrors are HTTP, but due to brainless
> > accountants mindlessly running "security auditing tools," they forbid
> > real directory listings, and are configured to only return an existing
> > "/index.*" file to the useragent.
> >
> > Hopefully, someone who actually has a clue (not me) will chime in with
> > the real reason why index.txt exists.
> >
> >        jcr
> >
> 
> Actually the installer uses it to make a list of file sets to present
> to the user.
> If it isn't there then no sets are presented.
> 
> >From src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub:
> 
> 	# Get list of files from the server.
> 	if [[ $_url_type == ftp && -z $ftp_proxy ]] ; then
> 		_file_list=$(ftp $FTPOPTS "$_url_base/")
> 		ftp_error "Login failed." "$_file_list" && return
> 		ftp_error "No such file or directory." "$_file_list" && return
> 	else
> 		# Assumes index file is "index.txt" for http (or proxy)
> 		# We can't use index.html since the format is server-dependent
> 		_file_list=$(ftp $FTPOPTS -o - "$_url_base/index.txt" | \
> 			sed -e 's/^.* //' | sed -e 's/
> //')
> 	fi
> 

In fact, the above just gets the content of index.txt
and applies the 's/^.* //' smartness, thus eliminating
exactly the difference between 'ls' and 'ls -l'.

The installer does further work with this list:

        # Initialize _sets to the list of sets found in _src, and initialize
	# _get_sets to the intersection of _sets and DEFAULTSETS.

(Indeed, I have never seen the installer present me with 'install.iso'
or 'index.txt', which _are_ listed in index.txt too.)

It still looks like index.txt is just a list of files that are there.
Is there any reason to have this information in the 'ls' or 'ls -l'
specifically? (It has changed back and forth in the last month.)