My original message is as follows:
"Hello all!
> We want to be able to use the ls function where it will return the month,
> day, and year each time it is run instead of returning the month, day, and
> time for files up to six months old and then displaying the year.
> Examples:
> 
> > ls -l reins*18*
> -rw-rw-r--   1 isabatch dba            0 Aug 18 10:13
> reins_policy_19980818.lst
> 
> This is NOT what we want.
> 
> 
> > ls -l reins*18*
> -rw-rw-r--   1 isabatch dba            0 Aug 18 1998
> reins_policy_19980818.lst
> 
> This IS what we are looking for. 
> 
> 
> I've looked through the man pages and have found that ls doesn't seem to
> have this functionality included with it, so I figured that I would have
> to
> write my own version of ls to do this. Does anyone have any examples that
> I
> can look at? 
> 
> Thank you very much!
> 
> 
> Stephen Spalding
> Associate System Administrator
> Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance
> sspaldin_at_mem-ins.com
> 1000 West Nifong
> Columbia, MO 65203
> (573) 499 - 4230
> (800) 442 - 0590
> fax (573) 499 - 4310"
> 
> 
I received responses from several people, most of which said that I needed
to get my hands on the GNU version of ls which comes with it's own set of
source code. From there, I can modify the source code to get it to do what
ever I want.
I downloaded a whole set of utilities from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/fileutils-3.16.tar.gz	
and here is the change that I made to ls.c:
  if (full_time)
    {
      fmt = "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y";
    }
  else
    {
        /* Added 08-18-98 StephenS */
  /*   fmt = "%b %e  %Y";  */
     fmt = "%d-%b-%Y";
   /* if (current_time > when + 6L * 30L * 24L * 60L * 60L      */      /*
Old. */
          /* || current_time < when - 60L * 60L)          */    /* In the
future. */
        /* {      */
          /* The file is fairly old or in the future.
             POSIX says the cutoff is 6 months old;
             approximate this by 6*30 days.
             Allow a 1 hour slop factor for what is considered "the future",
             to allow for NFS server/client clock disagreement.
             Show the year instead of the time of day.  */
          /*    fmt = "%b %e  %Y";    */
        /*  }   */
      /* else */
        /* { */
          /* fmt = "%b %e %H:%M"; */
/*      } */
     }
Now, the output of ls looks like this:
-rwxr-xr-x   1 sspaldin wcis      270336 18-Aug-1998 14:54 vdir
Thanks to all who responded!
-Stephen Spalding
Received on Tue Aug 18 1998 - 19:56:56 NZST