Re: [PATCH] dd status= option not documented in Info file

[Jim Meyering]

Andrew Church wrote:
> To whom it may concern,
>
> I recently noticed that the "status=noxfer" option to dd, which is
> documented in the man page, is missing from the Info documentation as of
> at least coreutils-7.1 (and possibly earlier).  I don't know whether this
> is intentional, but on the assumption it's not, I've included a patch

Thanks.  It must have been an oversight.

> below that adds a basic description of the option to "coreutils.texi".
> Of course, feel free to make the change in a different way, or not at all.
>
> As a side note, I find it somewhat curious that the default is to display
> the "xfer" information.  While my own experience is hardly enough to draw

There was some discussion when the feature was added:

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/3201

> generalizations from, in the vast majority of cases in which I use dd, I
> find the information extraneous clutter--I can tell from the blocks in/out
> lines the amount of data transferred, and the transfer speed is of no
> relevance.  (I locally use a separate patch, at
>     http://achurch.org/patch-pile/coreutils/7.1/dd-noxfer-default.diff
> to disable this extra information by default and allow it to be displayed
> with "status=xfer" instead.)  Out of curiosity, was there a particular
> reason for this information to be displayed by default?
>
>   --Andrew Church
>     address@hidden
>     http://achurch.org/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> diff -urN coreutils-7.1-orig/doc/coreutils.texi 
> coreutils-7.1/doc/coreutils.texi
> --- coreutils-7.1-orig/doc/coreutils.texi     2009-02-21 03:34:02 +0900
> +++ coreutils-7.1/doc/coreutils.texi  2009-02-22 13:53:26 +0900
> @@ -7649,6 +7649,11 @@
>  Copy @var{blocks} @samp{ibs}-byte blocks from the input file, instead
>  of everything until the end of the file.
>
> address@hidden status=noxfer
> address@hidden status
> +Do not print statistics on bytes transferred and transfer rate (the
> +third status line printed when @command{dd} exits).

Thanks!
I've tweaked the wording:

  Do not print the overall transfer rate and volume statistics
  that normally make up the third status line when @command{dd} exits.

added your name and a log entry.
This is small enough that you don't need a Copyright assignment.
In you contribute again, please look through the contribution
guidelines:

  http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/plain/HACKING

Here's what I expect to push:

>From de13679b327ee8f07f7cb9f37c043969abc29b1d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Andrew Church <address@hidden>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:25:01 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] doc: describe dd's status=noxref option

* doc/coreutils.texi (dd invocation): Describe status=noxref.
---
 THANKS             |    1 +
 doc/coreutils.texi |    5 +++++
 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS
index c78e85d..a6f1a6a 100644
--- a/THANKS
+++ b/THANKS
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ Andreas Stolcke                     address@hidden
 Andrei Gaponenko                    address@hidden
 Andres Soolo                        address@hidden
 Andrew Burgess                      address@hidden
+Andrew Church                       address@hidden
 Andrew Dalke                        address@hidden
 Andrew Fabbro                       address@hidden
 Andrew Pham                         address@hidden
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 8d496ad..2c1fae5 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -7649,6 +7649,11 @@ dd invocation
 Copy @var{blocks} @samp{ibs}-byte blocks from the input file, instead
 of everything until the end of the file.

address@hidden status=noxfer
address@hidden status
+Do not print the overall transfer rate and volume statistics
+that normally make up the third status line when @command{dd} exits.
+
 @item address@hidden,@address@hidden
 @opindex conv
 Convert the file as specified by the @var{conversion} argument(s).
--
1.6.2.rc1.256.g58a87