Subject: bug#32308: join doesn't ignore trailing whitespace

From: Dima Kogan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2018 20:11:04 -0700

Hi. It appears that join doesn't ignore trailing whitespace, resulting
in surprising results. I'm attaching two data files. one is the output
of 'seq 5', and the other is the same thing, but with a trailing space
added to each line. Look:

  dima@scrawny:~$ join -j 1 -e - -o auto /tmp/dat.no.trailing.space /tmp/dat.no.trailing.space 
  1
  2
  3
  4
  5

  dima@scrawny:~$ join -j 1 -e - -o auto /tmp/dat.trailing.space /tmp/dat.trailing.space   
  1 - -
  2 - -
  3 - -
  4 - -
  5 - -

I guess the manpage isn't explicit about what happens in this case, but
as a user, I find this to be extremely surprising, and this thus feels
like a bug. Thanks.

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