If you are in a situation where you are parsing the output of ls you are already writing code, and a shell designed for interactive use is a terrible tool for t

If you are in a situation where you are parsing the output of ls you are already writing code, and a shell designed for interactive use is a terrible tool for that job. Use something else. There are many many more better high level programming or scripting languages, which makes it both easier to write parsing code and removes most need to do so in the first place, since the apis usually give you structured data in the first place.