Why ls -Q give output as “Z\1” if the file name is ‘Z1’?

$ touch "z1"
$ ls -Q
"z\1"

Why “ls -Q” give output as "z\1" if the file name is ‘z1‘?

The output is coming with double slash in between ‘z’ and ‘1’.

Answer

The -Q-Switch (also --quote-names) will quote the names. How this quoting is done is defined by the --quoting-style-Switch.

Snippet from the man page:

–quoting-style=WORD
use quoting style WORD for entry names: literal, locale, shell, shell-always, c, escape

This will lead to the following result:

• ls --quoting-style=literal "z1" => z1
• ls --quoting-style=locale "z1" => ‘z\1’
• ls --quoting-style=shell "z1" => 'z1'
• ls --quoting-style=shell-always "z1" => 'z1'
• ls --quoting-style=c "z1" => "z\1"
• ls --quoting-style=escape "z1" => z\1

I can’t tell you what the default is. But it have to be one of these locale, c, escape