Paul Eggert wrote: > On 11/04/10 00:56, Jim Meyering wrote: > >> However, what about Eric's example? >> >> $ src/stat-p -c '_%-0 010.4:X_' k # yours >> _234 _ >> $ src/stat-j -c '_%-0 010.4:X_' k # mine >> _0234 _ > > That's simply an issue of whether the value is considered to be signed > or unsigned, and can be fixed by the patch at the end of this message. > > However, let me take a step back a minute. Do users really want all > this functionality? Personally, what I'd like to see is a single > format like this: > > %.3X > > that prints out the entire seconds since the Epoch, truncated > to millseconds. That's simpler than what we require now: > > %X.%.3:X > > The changelogs suggest that we used to do things the simpler way, > but changed on Oct. 21. I don't recall this being discussed: I
It was due to portability concerns, since with coreutils-8.6, %X, %Y, etc. expanded to floating point values, and that broke backwards compatibility: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.general/161/focus=366 However, enabling floating point output only when there is a ".PREC" part of the format sounds like a fine compromise. Sure, old scripts that used %.3X (expecting no ".") would break, but I doubt any such uses exist, since that notation did nothing useful. A patch would be most welcome. > assume it was due to floating point rounding issues. Still, I'd > prefer the simpler notation, and we should be able to implement it > without floating point. Would that be OK? The idea would be > to support ".PRECISION" in the formats for W, X, Y, and Z, and > to drop support for ':W' and the like.
