[agumonkey]

Sure, but a non-ambiguous external representation should be mandatory when a semantic value conflates with a presentation one.

Here ' ' is part of both worlds: . .. ..

A first idea: . .. ..\

ls may also take inspiration from bash completion, where dirsep serves as a better delimiter than ' '

    noob ~ $ mkdir -pv lsb/wat
    noob ~ $ cd lsb/wat
    noob ~/lsb/wat $ mkdir ".. "
    noob ~/lsb/wat $ ls -lah
    total 12K
    drwxr-xr-x 3 noob noob 4,0K august  28 16:52 .
    drwxr-xr-x 3 noob noob 4,0K august  28 16:52 ..
    drwxr-xr-x 2 noob noob 4,0K august  28 16:52 .. 
    noob ~/lsb/wat $ cd ..<TAB-COMPLETION>
    ../  .. /