On Fri, 2009-07-24 at 10:48 +0100, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
> > Pádraig Brady wrote:
> >>
> >> Also it's quite easy to achieve with existing tools:
> >> awk '{print length, $0}' <file | sort -n | cut -f2- -d' '
> >
> > IMHO, this is a decisive argument for not adding the option.
> > However, I would welcome a paragraph documenting the technique as
> > an example of how to extend sort.
>
> I'll mention the DSU idiom in the info docs,
> with this as an example.That's fair - I find it more convenient to use sort -l in the case of sorting on the second key of a file, but a note in the docs about using awk's "length" (which didn't occur to me at the time) would be good enough. > > >> What might be better would be to add an option > >> to `wc` to get it to prepend various counts to a line > >> (words, chars, bytes, cells), which then could be > >> sorted and stripped as above. > > > > This is tempting, but I am reluctant to modify wc in this manner. > > wc is a fundamental tool, and adding a feature like this would > > seem to bring too little value for the impact on the code. > > It's easier to say "just use ___" (perl, awk, etc). > > Having it in wc would allow one to easily count chars, bytes, cells. > But I agree it's not needed often enough to add. > > cheers, > Pádraig. -- Ethan Baldridge <et...@superiordocumentservices.com> Superior Document Services
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