>>25
I've had some problems with
ls. I believe it's supposed to `intelligently' change its format whether you're outputting to a terminal or a file/pipe. e.g.
$ ls
file1 file2 file3
vs.
$ ls >afile
$ cat afile
file1
file2
file3
A few years ago I did have this break on me, and sometimes it would pipe the `column' version to another program. I had a pretty awkward setup though, so it was probably my fault.
Also piping isn't as encouraged in GNU software. It's all programs with their own stupid `sub-shells' or that strictly expect some sort of configuration file. In *BSD it's common practice to do something like
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