On Aug 24, 2015, at 3:34 AM, f0rhum <[email protected]> wrote: > > Le 23/08/2015 23:11, Stephane Chazelas a écrit : > >> 2015-08-23 13:26:35 +0200, Erik Auerswald: >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 08:58:01PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote: >>>> Pádraig Brady wrote: >>>>> Also base64 -w0 has similar meaning. >>>> I didn't know that, but I don't like that either. Utilities should >>>> use an explicit representation for infinity, if that's what they >>>> need. 'Inf', say. >>>> >>>> In the meantime, the patch that I installed is helpful even if we >>>> later add an explicit representation of infinity. >>> Using 0 to disable a length or width limit is quite common with networking >>> gear. I do not know any example requiring a keyword like "Inf", neither >>> UNIX (like) nor other CLIs. >> [...] >> >> Anything using strtod() to parse numbers should understand inf >> or infinity (with any vAriATion on the case). >> >> That's the case of GNU sleep for instance. >> >> That doesn't apply to integers though. > > I'm not involved, but just a suggestion if no one tought about this: why > not use w-1 ?
here's some more precedent for 0 meaning infinity; from `info sed': > `-l N' > `--line-length=N' > Specify the default line-wrap length for the `l' command. A > length of 0 (zero) means to never wrap long lines. If not > specified, it is taken to be 70. -- Aaron Davies [email protected]
