issues with \t and \n in file names

[nrdmn]

If there's a \t in a file name, the names' alignment in grid view breaks:

vagrant@exa:~/foo$ touch "`echo -e "h\th"`" aaaaa bbbbb ccccc ddddd eeeee fffff ggggg hhhhh iiiii jjjjj kkkkk lllll mmmmm nnnnn ooooo ppppp
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ exa
aaaaa  ccccc  eeeee  ggggg  hhhhh  jjjjj  lllll  nnnnn  ppppp
bbbbb  ddddd  fffff  h	h     iiiii  kkkkk  mmmmm  ooooo  
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ ls
aaaaa  ccccc  eeeee  ggggg  hhhhh  jjjjj  lllll  nnnnn  ppppp
bbbbb  ddddd  fffff  h?h    iiiii  kkkkk  mmmmm  ooooo

If there's a \n in a file name, grid view and lines view breaks:

vagrant@exa:~/foo$ touch "`echo -e "d\nd"`" aaaaa bbbbb ccccc ddddd eeeee fffff ggggg hhhhh
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ exa
aaaaa  bbbbb  ccccc  d
d  ddddd  eeeee  fffff  ggggg  hhhhh
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ exa -l
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 aaaaa
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 bbbbb
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 ccccc
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 d
d
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 ddddd
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 eeeee
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 fffff
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 ggggg
.rw-r--r-- 0 vagrant 12 Apr 13:06 hhhhh
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ ls
aaaaa  bbbbb  ccccc  d?d  ddddd  eeeee  fffff  ggggg  hhhhh
vagrant@exa:~/foo$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 aaaaa
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 bbbbb
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 ccccc
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 d?d
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 ddddd
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 eeeee
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 fffff
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 ggggg
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 0 Apr 12 13:06 hhhhh

GNU ls addresses these problems by replacing \t and \n with ?

[lilyball]

BSD ls also does the same thing. It appears that it replaces all control characters (including 0x7F) with ?.

[lilyball]

Interestingly, it actually appears to depend on whether the output is a terminal. If I pipe the results through cat, it prints the actual filename without replacements. It's unclear why it would do that, and I'm gonna say exa probably shouldn't care if the output is a terminal.

[lilyball]

Ah hah, there's a flag that controls this:

-q      Force printing of non-graphic characters in file names as the character `?'; this is the default when output is to a terminal.