De a documentação do GNU stat :
The ‘
%N’ format can be set with the environment variableQUOTING_STYLE. If that environment variable is not set, the default value is‘shell-escape’. Valid quoting styles are:‘
literal’
Output strings as-is; this is the same as the-Nor--literaloption....
‘
shell-escape’
Like ‘shell’, but also quoting non-printable characters using the POSIX proposed ‘$''’ syntax suitable for most shells....
‘
locale’
Quote strings as for C character string literals, except use surrounding quotation marks appropriate for the locale, and quote'like this'instead of"like this"in the default C locale. This looks nicer on many displays.
stat não usou essa variável em 8.21 (a alteração foi feita novembro passado . A saída do 14.04 parece ter usado QUOTING_STYLE=locale . Presumivelmente, esse era o padrão (implícito) então.