Bob Proulx wrote: > Hello Sebastian, > > Sebastian Bozlee wrote: >> I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. > > This is the right place for discussion about 'wc' and development for > it. Along with any of the other coreutils. > >> This is my first contribution to an open source project, so feedback >> is appreciated. I don't expect it to be put in the official code. > > Welcome! > >> I've added the ability to count tabs as any number of spaces over 0 to >> wc. It's used like this: >> wc -L --tab-width=4 [files...] > > The threshold for adding single letter options is pretty high. To do > that would need pretty strong reasons. So it would be unlikely that > a -L option would get added. Long options are available however.
Bob, -L exists and basically selects the "count screen width" functionality, so only --tab-width was added with the patch. > The big problem with the feature you are adding is that it already > exists in the 'expand' program. Therefore it isn't needed in 'wc'. > If you haven't looked at it please look at the 'expand' program. > > expand -t8 SOMEFILE | wc > > The Unix philosophy is that small programs are built in such a way > that they can be combined together and create by the combination more > powerful programs. The 'expand' program knows all about expanding > tabs. The 'wc' program knows all about counts. Combined they know > all about counting files with tabs. This is one of those 50:50 things. The more general way to do it as Bob suggests is: expand -t4 FILE | wc -L That also has the advantage of allowing one specify arbitrary tab positions. So I don't think this functionality should be part of wc. > I am hoping this doesn't discourage you. In particular it is very > unusual to actually receive code patches along with suggestions. That > was great! here here. cheers, Pádraig. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
