`rtk ls` always return (empty) on macOS

[whitemay]

rtk ls always return (empty) on macOS.
on Linux, it works fine.

[igor-lobanov-maersk]

A bit of a show-stopper this one.

Also, making this configuration change doesn't make any difference:

[hooks]
exclude_commands = ["ls"]

[qazi0]

wow, fixing this should be the top priority (havent tested this myself yet)

[cliffordx]

it used to work, now seems like it lost its magic?

[tahlers-smst]

seems to be connected to this one #1276 (workaround is also discussed there but did not try myself)

[lumincui]

This should be fixed by PR #1338, which forces LC_ALL=C for locale-independent ls output and adds a fallback to raw output when parsing fails due to unrecognized locale formats.

[aeppling]

Hey, on it

[pszymkowiak]

[w] wshm · Automated triage by AI

🔍 Automated Triage

❓ Category	needs-info
🟡 Priority	medium
🎯 Confidence	62%

Summary

Likely duplicate of #1321 (eza alias) or #1276 (non-English locale); reporter needs to provide macOS version, rtk version, shell config, and whether ls is aliased before triaging further

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Triaged automatically by wshm · This is an automated analysis, not a human review.

[jackusay]

same in win10 git-bash :(

[derjochenmeyer]

Reproduced on macOS with German locale. Test below confirms this is the same root cause as #1276 — LC_ALL=C fully resolves it, which is exactly what PR #1338 enforces.

Environment

• rtk: 0.37.0 (Homebrew)
• OS: macOS 26.3.1, Darwin 25.3.0, Apple Silicon (arm64)
• Shell: zsh
• Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_ALL= (unset), LC_CTYPE= (unset)
• ls binary: BSD ls (macOS native)
• ls alias: ls='ls -G' (color flag only — does not affect rtk, which invokes the binary directly, not the interactive alias)

Reproduction

$ rtk --version
rtk 0.37.0

$ ls ~/.claude/skills/ | head -3
ahrefs-columns
api-design
askgpt

$ rtk ls ~/.claude/skills/
(empty)

$ rtk ls -vvv ~/.claude/skills/
Chars: 854 → 8 (100% reduction)
(empty)

Affects every variant tested: rtk ls, rtk ls ., rtk ls /tmp, with and without -l, -la, --ultra-compact. rtk find works fine on the same paths.

Root cause: locale, not BSD ls format

Forcing C locale fixes it completely:

$ LC_ALL=C rtk ls ~/.claude/skills/
ahrefs-columns/
api-design/
askgpt/
...

So this is a duplicate of #1276 (non-English locale date parsing), and PR #1338 (force LC_ALL=C + raw fallback on parse failure) should resolve it. #1358 and #810 take similar approaches if #1338 stalls.

Happy to test an RC against the German-locale setup if that helps.

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Edit: re-formatted — code fences were escaped in the original post.