`ls -avR` recurses into `../`, waling up to the filesystem root

[baszoetekouw]

I'm observing the following on my Armbian/Ubumntu box

╰─▶ uname -a
Linux ophelia 6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx #1 SMP Sun Jun 14 17:47:08 UTC 2026 aarch64 GNU/Linux

╰─▶ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Armbian 26.8.0-trunk.404 resolute
Release:	26.04
Codename:	resolute

╰─▶ /bin/ls --version
ls (uutils coreutils) 0.8.0

When running ls -avR, ls starts recursing to ../ and then up the entire filesystem. That is most definitely not what I want. Without the -v the command works as expected.

To reproduce:

mkdir -p /tmp/a/b/c/d/e
cd /tmp/a/b
ls -aR      # correct: recurses only into c, c/d, c/d/e
ls -aRv     # bug: also recurses into ./.. , ./../.. , etc., up to /

╰─▶ /bin/ls -aR
.:
.  ..  c

./c:
.  ..  d

./c/d:
.  ..  e

./c/d/e:
.  ..

vs

╰─▶ /bin/ls -aRv | head -20
ls: cannot open directory './../../systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-systemd-logind.service-31nhNn': Permission denied
ls: cannot open directory './../../systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-polkit.service-RVvy62': Permission denied
ls: cannot open directory './../../systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-lm-sensors.service-WpGudF': Permission denied
ls: cannot open directory './../../systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-colord.service-w1X5k6': Permission denied
ls: cannot open directory './../../systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-chrony.service-ECFlfC': Permission denied
ls: ./../../../..: not listing already-listed directory
.:
.
c
..

./..:
.
b
..

./../..:
.
a
systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-chrony.service-ECFlfC
systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-colord.service-w1X5k6
systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-lm-sensors.service-WpGudF
systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-polkit.service-RVvy62
systemd-private-47fb451c3c4746f79bd90a969af88492-systemd-logind.service-31nhNn
..

ls: ./../../../tmp: not listing already-listed directory
ls: cannot open directory './../../../root': Permission denied
ls: ./../../../boot/..: not listing already-listed directory
ls: ./../../../boot/dtb-6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx/..: not listing already-listed directory
ls: ./../../../data/..: not listing already-listed directory

[Gooh456]

Dug into this one. Good news: it's already fixed on `main`, just not closed out yet.

Built a real `0.8.0` binary (the version you're on) and reproduced it exactly - `ls -aRv` on a small test tree walked straight past it and started recursing into my actual home directory. Root cause in that version: `.`/`..` get inserted at a fixed position (index 0/1) in the entries list, then the list gets sorted, then recursion skips "the first 2 entries" assuming they're still `.`/`..`. That only holds for the default name sort (where `.`/`..` happen to land first anyway) - version sort doesn't put them there, so the skip lands on the wrong entries and `.`/`..` get walked into as if they were real subdirectories.

Built the same repro against current `main` and it's gone - `ls` correctly stops at the leaf directories. Traced it to #9851 (an unrelated refactor of the directory traversal for library-embedding purposes) which replaced that position-based skip with an actual per-entry flag checked at recursion time, so it's correct regardless of sort order. That landed about 2 weeks after 0.8.0 shipped, so a build from main (or once 0.10.0 is out) should be fine.

Since there wasn't a regression test covering this exact -a + -R + -v combination, I opened a small test-only PR to add one so it can't silently break again: #13515