"John P. Eisenmenger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Recently my coreutils package upgraded from version 5.2.1 to version > 5.94. With the new version, specifying columnar offsets on the > command line no longer works.
Commands like "sort +1.0" didn't work with 5.2.1 either, unless you built it in an environment that specified pre-2001 POSIX. Perhaps there was something different about how you built it this time? The background is this. In 1992 the wonderful folks at POSIX changed the syntax of "sort", saying that you're supposed to use the -k option instead of funky options like +1.0. They said the old syntax would still work, but it was obsolescent. In 2001 they removed the old syntax entirely; conforming implementations are supposed to sort a file named "+1.0" instead. When you build coreutils, you can specify which version of POSIX you want it to conform to by default. You can override this at runtime by setting an environment variable. (My suggestion is to use "sort -k" instead, though.) _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
