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Why not parse `ls` and what to do instead

I consistently see answers quoting this link stating definitively "Don't parse ls!" This bothers me for a couple of reasons: It seems the information in that link has been accepted wholesale with ...

please forgive remaining rough edges; i having spent far too much time on this already... rather than quote the OP directly (as originally intended) i will try to summarize and paraphrase. And, so, to the topic at hand: in my view, just because an expert might be able to violate this rule without getting completely smacked down, i don't see any way that you could justify telling a beginner that "sometimes" it's okay to parse ls output, because: it's not. [UPDATE 2014-11-10: added headers and reorganized/refactored content; and also: reformatting, rewording, clarifying, and um... "concise-ifying"... i intended this to simply be a clean-up, though it did turn into a bit of a rework.

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