Subject: Re: bug#5958: Sort-8.4 bug

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:44:45 -0500 (GMT+5)

Eric Blake writes:
> 
> I am not blowing off this bug report - I agree with you that we need
> better documentation.  However, I don't have the resources to do all the

It's not just a documentation problem. The behavior in older versions of
coreutils was compatible with other members of the unix family; the current
version is not. That's a regression and should be recognized as such, even if
no version of POSIX ever specified the behavior.

> legwork myself (in particular, access to the POSIX 1992 standard would
> be a big help), so in open source fashion, I'm asking for help.  And
> since it seems to be your itch, the best you can do is scratch it by
> providing that help, rather than criticizing the fact that we are trying
> to spread the work load.

I didn't send the initial bug report, but it did catch my interest. "sort +1"
is for me a finger-macro that I'll never stop using no matter how many people
declare it obsolete. "sort +1 -2" not so much.

The hunt for old POSIX versions is a dead end. Instead, I'll try to find
exactly when this stopped working. Maybe it was an unintended side effect of
a change elsewhere.

-- 
Alan Curry