GNU bug report logs - #22495
sleep: doc: mention approximate sleep time

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: sleep floating point docs
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 05:03:13 +0800

(info "(coreutils) sleep invocation")

   Historical implementations of ‘sleep’ have required that NUMBER be an
integer, and only accepted a single argument without a suffix.  However,
GNU ‘sleep’ accepts arbitrary floating point numbers.  *Note Floating
point::.

Add:

*GNU sleep will pass that floating number to the system, which might or
 might not ignore the time indicated after the decimal point.

OR

*GNU sleep will round / truncate? the number into a whole number, before
sending it to the system.

Message #8 received at 22495 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>,
 22495 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#22495: sleep floating point docs
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 14:18:26 -0800

積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Add:
>
> *GNU sleep will pass that floating number to the system, which might or
>   might not ignore the time indicated after the decimal point.
>
> OR
>
> *GNU sleep will round / truncate? the number into a whole number, before
> sending it to the system.

"sleep" has always been approximate.  If you issue a "sleep X" command, all that 
you can count on is that you sleep for at least X seconds.  We shouldn't 
document the internals of how "sleep" accomplishes this.  That being said, it 
might make sense to say "sleep is approximate", if we're not saying it already.

Message #11 received at 22495 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: 22495 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#22495: sleep floating point docs
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 09:05:28 +0800

I can't tell if you are like the IRS: go ahead and add cents if you
insist. We'll do the truncation work for you. Or if you are saying that
you will be passing the cents along to the next layer...

I mean you even add additional arguments for him, so who knows the
motivation for all that flexibility.

Nobody can tell if you mean you are just tidying (int()) up his input
before passing it to a deeper layer that only takes ints.

Or if you are now "no longer unnecessarily not allowing the user to pass
floats if he wants. Which will be presented unharmed to the next layer."

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