Hello, > On Nov 30, 2015, at 15:03, Bernhard Voelker <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 11/30/2015 06:46 PM, Saint Michael wrote: >> why don't we just go ahead and do it? > > not everything which can be done makes sense to do, and even > less if the functionality is already there.
Continuing Bernhard's point, just "going ahead and doing it" is easier said than done - at 141KB of C code, "sort.c" is a complicated program. There are many edge-cases that need to be handled properly, and several non-trivial usage cases. That being said, a working high-quality patch is worth a thousands words, and if you (or others) implement such a feature, it will make a stronger case for inclusion. If you do intend to pursue this course, here are some pointers: This is a sort source code: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/sort.c Or in a slightly more informative source-code viewer: http://lingrok.org/xref/coreutils/src/sort.c There have been few past attempts at such patches (myself included): http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2010-11/msg00078.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2010-11/msg00085.html http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2013-01/msg00027.html A different approach is writing wrapper-scripts adding the "--header" option (disclaimer: this one is mine, but there are many other variations out there): https://github.com/agordon/bin_scripts/blob/master/scripts/sort-header.in regards, - assaf
