GNU Emacs has complex code to deal with it. Some "ls" programs support a "-dired" option, some not. If this option is not supported, then Dired may fail to pars

GNU Emacs has complex code to deal with it. Some "ls" programs support a "-dired" option, some not. If this option is not supported, then Dired may fail to parse some unusual filenames. Then there is an 'ls' emulation in Emacs Lisp, which by default is not used on UNIX, but on Windows... There is a huge machinery with lots of complexity to deal with listing directories, either with ls, a GNU provided ls, or by providing a complex emulation of ls.