[noelwelsh]

This is a version of a No True Scotsman argument: the True Unix did not have these flags and therefore these flags are not part of the Unix Way. The extra flags were added over time because the One True Unix did not provide the functionality that people needed in real world use. They couldn't be added in a composable way because of failures in the shell programming model (unstructured text + sh is terrible). The Unix shell model was broken from the start.

[edgyquant]

No that’s literally what GNU stands for.

[throwaway31381]

I won't deny the useful additions GNU and BSD made to the barebones UNIX tools, but just by skimming the ls man page I can list some flags whose addition wasn't caused by the Unix Philosophy's limitation:

  -1 list one file per line
  -C list entries by columns
  -t sort by time, newest first; see --time
  -r, --reverse reverse order while sorting
  -S sort by file size, largest first
  --sort=WORD sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (- 
  S), time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X), width