Do this
 

here is the solution I use.

instead of

ls *.txt

add a slash:

\ls *.txt

it appears that ls is alaised somehow to run through a formatter. Using the slash causes it to use the unaliased generic ls.

The "somehow" must be something that you configured (in the shell "dot" files - see the shell config section of this Unix FAQ)
or something that you installed.

That's pretty neat (and news to me anyway).
I knew about the "command" command (for bypassing shell builtins and/or user-defined functions in scripts).

But why does the \backslash work?
Doesn't appear to be a keyword...
$ type \
>
[^C]
$ type \\
-bash: type: \: not found

$ type '\'
-bash: type: \: not found

--

Hmm, apparently the \ has the same effect as *quoting* the text.
So, typing...
'ls'
would have the same effect: bypass the alias and run the standard utility.

Still not clear why that works tho.

The page http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~s...m/aliases.html (about special uses of aliases) explains:

Interesting page!

I can relate to his "find" example there.
For a few scripts, i've even used this heading:
#!/bin/bash -f -
to kill globbing within the whole script... so that stuff like "*.txt" can be
passed to internal functions without expanding (if something in the cwd
happened to match).