GNU bug report logs - #9956
Linux program "sum"

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Message #18 received at 9956 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Rodney Rieck <rodneyrieck <at> suddenlink.net>
Cc: 9956 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#9956: Linux program "sum"
Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:00:50 +0000

On 11/04/2011 06:37 PM, Rodney Rieck wrote:
>    Hello,
> 
> 
> 
>    This is about the Linux program "sum" that computes checksums and
>    number of blocks in a file.  I'm not writing about a program error I've
>    found -- I am writing about how the output from the program is
>    formatted.
> 
>    If you type in something like this:  sum -r *
> 
>    and if there are multiple files present in the current directory, you
>    will get output like this for each file it checks:
> 
>    [check_sum] [number_of_blocks] [file_name]
> 
>    If though on the command line you change the "*" to a single file name,
>    the output is the same except that it doesn't print/display the
>    "[file_name]", I guess because that seems redundant because the file
>    name is already known and was typed in on the command line.

I consider that a bug.
freebsd always outputs the file name for example.
This means that if you do `find -type f | xargs sum`,
the last entry could be without a file name.

Now we can't change without consideration for backwards compat,
though I'd be inclined to fix this inconsistency.

cheers,
Pádraig.

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