Date: 26 Sep 2002 10:34:05 +0100 From: Nick Hilliard <nick-list@netability.ie> To: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who broke sort(1) ? Message-ID: <1033032846.93210.69.camel@pancake.netability.ie>
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> >It's not like people didn't have nine years' advance warning to fix
> >their scripts.
>
> When's the first time the FreeBSD sort(1) man page mentioned that this
> syntax was deprecated? Can we at least start from there?
The man page in 4.x notes that "-k" is an alternative rather than the
recommended syntax. Moving something from being officially recommended
syntax in 4.x to dropping the syntax completely in 5.x is verging on
gratuitous breakage, and is going to confuse and piss off a lot of
users. In fact, why does somebody not modify the man page for -stable
to note that it is now deprecated usage, and please use "-k" instead?
Should this change even make it into 4.7? After all, the sooner the
better, and if 5.0 is going to be released in 6 weeks, that's not much
warning.
I'm all for the making the change in a controlled manner, but let's not
lose sight of the fact that FreeBSD is supposedly a functional operating
system, not a dysfunctional one. Tim Kientzle's suggestion is a good
compromise, and although it may cause some peculiar behaviour in
edge-case situations, it would be a lot better than the dropping the
syntax without warning from one major version to the next.
Nick
(off to fix some _POSIXLY_VERBOTEN scripts, grumble....)
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--- sort.1.orig Mon Sep 10 12:10:30 2001
+++ sort.1 Thu Sep 26 10:32:04 2002
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B sort
[\-cmus] [\-t separator] [\-o output-file] [\-T tempdir] [\-bdfiMnr]
-[+POS1 [\-POS2]] [\-k POS1[,POS2]] [file...]
+[\-k POS1[,POS2]] [file...]
.br
.B sort
{\-\-help,\-\-version}
@@ -150,15 +150,19 @@
.I \-c
option, check that no pair of consecutive lines compares equal.
.TP
-.I "+POS1 [\-POS2]"
+.I "\-k POS1[,POS2]"
+An alternate syntax for specifying sorting keys.
Specify a field within each line to use as a sorting key. The field
consists of the portion of the line starting at POS1 and up to (but
not including) POS2 (or to the end of the line if POS2 is not given).
-The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 0.
+The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 1.
.TP
-.I "\-k POS1[,POS2]"
+.I "+POS1 [\-POS2]"
An alternate syntax for specifying sorting keys.
-The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 1.
+The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 0.
+This syntax is now officially deprecated because it conflicts with
+the POSIX 1003.2 standard. The syntax will be dropped in a future
+release of FreeBSD.
.PP
A position has the form \fIf\fP.\fIc\fP, where \fIf\fP is the number
of the field to use and \fIc\fP is the number of the first character
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