Representing each row as an object works, but it ends up having us write custom objects for different result types. When you run Sultan().ls('-l'), you will get back a list of Strings, which you can freely use in Python for your specific needs (like use a Regex to fetch date/times or file size). I felt like this offers developers the best flexibility, rather than trying to customize each output (which will definitely make the codebase very confusing)

And then I remember that Windows PowerShell does (attempts to, to be fair) exactly that

While PS-native stuff yield objects, not all pre-PS utilities/builtins are overriden or have interface for PS and output old fashioned text blob, which is not automagically parsed in any way by PS. My comment was system-level, not utility-level.