Also I've noticed terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output and sprinkle in formatting on the display.
iirc, if your terminal emulator is doing something funny with the output of `ls` it's because they've re-implemented it as a function and are intercepting the call to ls and running their function instead, not because they're recognizing the output.
Also I've noticed terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output and sprinkle in formatting on the display.