Kernel Hacks & Weird Filenames

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <326 at augean.OZ> idall at augean.OZ (Ian Dall) writes:
>"Unprintable" characters in file names would be less of a problem if they
>could be readilly be seen. It seems to me that the best solution is to
>allow file names to be as general as possible but to modify either the
>terminal driver or ls to display unprintable characters in some unambiguous
>form.

Geez.  Haven't you heard of "pipes and filters"?  Pipe the output of "ls"
into a filter that converts whatever your notion of unprintable characters
may be into whatever you think the corresponding printable equivalent
should be.  Don't try to muck around with the basic system kernel and
utilities!