Pádraig Brady <p...@draigbrady.com> writes: > Reading POSIX more closely I see there is also pause logic for the first page > only: > -f [XSI] [Option Start] Use a <form-feed> for new pages, instead of the > default behavior that uses a sequence of <newline> characters. > Pause before beginning the first page if the standard output is > associated with a terminal. [Option End]
Thanks, I'll have a look. > I presume you're waiting until the implementation solidifies, > but just in case, a couple of basic tests to show > that -p is accepted at least would be good. Yep, I was going to add some simple tests afterwards. Paul Eggert said: > On 2025-07-28 09:23, Pádraig Brady wrote: >> Yes it's a fair point. >> We don't want existing scripts that use -f to start pausing unexpectedly. >> I suppose this is a case for only pausing with -f if POSIXLY_CORRECT >> env var is set. > Although backward compatibility is an issue, the current behavior is > clearly wrong for the intended use of -f, which is for logins via > printing terminals so stdout is the printer. So a better way to think > about it is that this is merely a longstanding obscure bug in GNU 'pr' > that we can fix. > > The only reason we haven't noticed the bug before, is that nobody has > seriously used those terminals in decades, so nobody has run into the > bug and taken the time to report it. > > Other 'pr' implementations (e.g., FreeBSD) do the right thing here, > and I see no significant reason (other than inertia) for us to be both > wrong for the intended use and incompatible with the rest of the > world. I don't really like the idea of changing '-f' depending on whether POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined. So I would prefer this as well. I'll write another patch later today based on your other emails as well. Collin
