Subject: Re: bug#13947: bug report for core-utils command : OD

From: Pádraig Brady <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:45:49 +0000

On 03/13/2013 09:53 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 03/13/2013 09:34 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
>> In reality, that should state something like:
> 
>>      Output as characters in the current locale, using octal sequences
>> or backslash escapes for all non-graphic bytes.
> 
> Note we output spaces, so I'd s/non-graphic/non-printable/.
> 
> Also multi byte is always going to be problematic displaying
> in a grid like this, so we'll probably continue to do as
> we do now for the utf8 example above and output octal and dots.
> So therefore s/characters/single byte characters/.

Hopefully the attached clarifies things.

thanks,
Pádraig.
>From 1f9a6a48bbc05599092cb5da2429ab3ccfe87631 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?P=C3=A1draig=20Brady?= <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:33:57 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] doc: clarify the printable characters output by od

* src/od.c (usage): Mention any printable character is output,
Not just ASCII.
* doc/coreutils.texi (od invocation): Further clarify that only
single byte characters are output (due to the alignment requirement).
Reported in http://bugs.gnu.org/13947
---
 doc/coreutils.texi |    6 +++---
 src/od.c           |    4 ++--
 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 8f1df45..d2f3b21 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -1908,14 +1908,14 @@ of each output line using each of the data types that you specified,
 in the order that you specified.
 
 Adding a trailing ``z'' to any type specification appends a display
-of the ASCII character representation of the printable characters
+of the single byte character representation of the printable characters
 to the output line generated by the type specification.
 
 @table @samp
 @item a
 named character, ignoring high-order bit
 @item c
-ASCII character or backslash escape,
+printable single byte character or backslash escape,
 @item d
 signed decimal
 @item f
@@ -2003,7 +2003,7 @@ Output as octal bytes.  Equivalent to @samp{-t o1}.
 
 @item -c
 @opindex -c
-Output as ASCII characters or backslash escapes.  Equivalent to
+Output as printable single byte characters or backslash escapes.  Equivalent to
 @samp{-t c}.
 
 @item -d
diff --git a/src/od.c b/src/od.c
index e7d881b..e8cab46 100644
--- a/src/od.c
+++ b/src/od.c
@@ -339,7 +339,7 @@ suffixes may be . for octal and b for multiply by 512.\n\
 Traditional format specifications may be intermixed; they accumulate:\n\
   -a   same as -t a,  select named characters, ignoring high-order bit\n\
   -b   same as -t o1, select octal bytes\n\
-  -c   same as -t c,  select ASCII characters or backslash escapes\n\
+  -c   same as -t c,  select printable characters or backslash escapes\n\
   -d   same as -t u2, select unsigned decimal 2-byte units\n\
 "), stdout);
       fputs (_("\
@@ -355,7 +355,7 @@ Traditional format specifications may be intermixed; they accumulate:\n\
 \n\
 TYPE is made up of one or more of these specifications:\n\
   a          named character, ignoring high-order bit\n\
-  c          ASCII character or backslash escape\n\
+  c          printable character or backslash escape\n\
 "), stdout);
       fputs (_("\
   d[SIZE]    signed decimal, SIZE bytes per integer\n\
-- 
1.7.7.6