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Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?
From: |
Andreas Schwab |
Subject: |
Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing? |
Date: |
Fri, 22 Dec 2006 17:55:18 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.91 (gnu/linux) |
Evan Hunt <address@hidden> writes:
>> POSIX specifies that that character position (if present) shall be
>> positive for the field start spec and non-negative for the field end spec
>> (with zero denoting the last character of the field). Thus GNU sort is
>> behaving correctly.
>
> Ah, okay, thanks.
>
> Bit of a doc problem in "info sort", then:
>
> `-k POS1[,POS2]'
> `--key=POS1[,POS2]'
> Specify a sort field that consists of the part of the line between
> POS1 and POS2 (or the end of the line, if POS2 is omitted),
> _inclusive_. Fields and character positions are numbered starting
> with 1. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^
>
> ...so I figured the 0 wasn't supposed to be allowed.
That does not contradict the use of 0 to describe the special case of the
_last_ character (which has a varying, non-zero position in every field).
> It seems to me that the principle of least surprise would mandate
> that .0 in a position spec should either be the equivalent of not
> setting a character offset, *or* that it should mean the "zeroth"
> character of the field (which would be an error)...
There is no such thing as a "zeroth" character in the position counting.
For the start field you cannot denote the last character, so using 0 does
not make sense.
Andreas.
--
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, address@hidden
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."
- mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Evan Hunt, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Andreas Schwab, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Evan Hunt, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?,
Andreas Schwab <=
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Evan Hunt, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Andreas Schwab, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Evan Hunt, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Jim Meyering, 2006/12/22
- Re: mistake in sort -k argument processing?, Evan Hunt, 2006/12/27