Subject: bug#17189: Sort bug #2

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:43:47 -0600

On 04/07/2014 01:12 PM, Nikos Balkanas wrote:

>> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/HACKING describes
>> the best way to send a patch.  However, I will warn you that we are very
>> reluctant to burn a short option letter if there is not already existing
>> practice of another non-GNU implementation using the same short option
>> letter for the same meaning.  Furthermore, I think that:
>>
>> LC_ALL=C sort ...
>>
>> is just about as easy to type as:
>>
>> sort --ascii ...
>>

> Actually:
> 
> sort -a
> 
> is much easier on the eye, and the hand.

Yes, but it presupposes burning a short option.  You'll have more
success getting a long option admitted, and only after it has proven
useful would a later release then commit to a short option, unless you
can first prove that someone else (such as BSD sort) already uses -a for
that same purpose.

> I don't like the LC_ALL=C. A lot
> of typos, caps are not easy,
> environment is best suited for many programs, not single ones.

Ah, but LC_COLLATE and friends DO suit many programs - 'sort', 'ls',
shell globs, and many other programs ALL use the SAME environment
variable for determining how their use of strcoll() will behave.  It
does no good to turn a blind eye to the fact that POSIX has already
standardized that any program that sorts (and not just 'sort') should
pay attention to the user's locale settings, where locale is set by
environment variables.

> 
> Let me know which patch you prefer, so that I can upload (don't want to
> flood you with patches).

Whatever you're willing to send.  This list is fairly low-volume
compared to other lists, such as the kernel, so we don't mind seeing
your patches, even if we decide not to apply it in entirety.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org