Pádraig Brady wrote: ... >> While -e without -o was previously a noop, and so could safely be extended >> IMHO, >> this will also change the behavior when with -e and -j are specified. >> Previously if -j > 1 was specified, and that field was missing, >> then -e would be used in its place, rather than the empty string. >> This still does that, but also does the padding. >> Without the -j issue I'd be 80:20 for just extending -e to auto pad, >> but given -j I'm 50:50. The alternative it to select this with >> say '-o padded', but that's less discoverable, and complicates >> the interface somewhat. > > Considering this more, I think it's safer to auto pad only > when '-o padded' is specified. I notice the plan9 `join` man page > has an example that uses -e '' to explicitly specify the NUL string as filler, > which would have triggered our auto pad if we left it as above.
I'm glad you found that, confirming that the conservative approach is better.
