When you explicitly provide the filenames for ls, it
   will stat each one for you.  I have no idea why this
   is done (other than maybe code cleanliness) because
   it is not needed for that particular output of ls.

Uh, so it doesn't have to use readdir() in that case?

Anyway, I've already stated why this bit of semantics is not going to
change, so can we all *drop* the subject, please?