ls adds a space at the start of some output. Seems to only happen when extra quoting is in the output: root@hmm:/tmp/oo# ls a b 'sd ' root@hmm:/tmp/oo# rm sd\ root@hmm:/tmp/oo# ls a b root@hmm:/tmp/oo# touch c root@hmm:/tmp/oo# ls a b c root@hmm:/tmp/oo# touch 'sdfsd sdfsd' root@hmm:/tmp/oo# ls a b c 'sdfsd sdfsd'