Package: coreutils
Version: 6.10-6
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
there is another base64 program that performs the same purpose as
base64 in coreutils:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64/
It accepts -e or --encode to mean the same thing that GNU base64
implies with no arguments. It also accepts -n and --noerrcheck to
mean the same thing as GNU base64's -i and --ignore-garbage.
A friend just installed it from FreeBSD ports, and says that that
base64 also works the way GNU base64 does if no arguments are
supplied, though the man page [0] isn't clear on that.
If GNU base64 just accepted (and ignored) -e and --encode arguments,
and treated -n and --noerrcheck as synonyms for -i, then scripts
written to invoke fourmilab's base64 could use GNU's instead.
Attached is a patch that should handle it. I didn't update the usage
output because it seems like a lot of noise, but i did get the info
docs. It's not clear to me if the man pages need touching up too, or
if they'll get re-genned from info somehow.
Thanks for maintaining coreutils in debian!
--dkg
[0]
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=base64&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE+and+Ports&format=html
- -- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii libacl1 2.2.47-2 Access control list shared library
ii libc6 2.7-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libselinux1 2.0.65-4 SELinux shared libraries
coreutils recommends no packages.
coreutils suggests no packages.
- -- no debconf information
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diff -ru coreutils-6.10.clean/doc/coreutils.info coreutils-6.10/doc/coreutils.info
--- coreutils-6.10.clean/doc/coreutils.info 2008-09-04 19:28:46.000000000 -0400
+++ coreutils-6.10/doc/coreutils.info 2008-09-04 19:55:47.000000000 -0400
@@ -1539,11 +1539,20 @@
decoding data. Input is expected to be base64 encoded data, and
the output will be the original data.
+`-e'
+`--encode'
+ Encoding data is the default, so this flag does nothing. It is
+ present for option-compatibility with base64 from
+ http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64/
+
`-i'
`--ignore-garbage'
+`-n'
+`--noerrcheck'
When decoding, newlines are always accepted. During decoding,
ignore unrecognized bytes, to permit distorted data to be decoded.
-
+ `-n' and `--noerrcheck' are for drop-in compatibility with
+ http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64/
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
indicates failure.
Only in coreutils-6.10/doc: coreutils.info~
diff -ru coreutils-6.10.clean/src/base64.c coreutils-6.10/src/base64.c
--- coreutils-6.10.clean/src/base64.c 2008-09-04 19:28:46.000000000 -0400
+++ coreutils-6.10/src/base64.c 2008-09-04 19:53:26.000000000 -0400
@@ -41,9 +41,11 @@
char *program_name;
static const struct option long_options[] = {
+ {"encode", no_argument, 0, 'e'},
{"decode", no_argument, 0, 'd'},
{"wrap", required_argument, 0, 'w'},
{"ignore-garbage", no_argument, 0, 'i'},
+ {"noerrcheck", no_argument, 0, 'n'},
{"help", no_argument, 0, GETOPT_HELP_CHAR},
{"version", no_argument, 0, GETOPT_VERSION_CHAR},
@@ -257,13 +259,18 @@
atexit (close_stdout);
- while ((opt = getopt_long (argc, argv, "dqiw:", long_options, NULL)) != -1)
+ while ((opt = getopt_long (argc, argv, "edqniw:", long_options, NULL)) != -1)
switch (opt)
{
case 'd':
decode = true;
break;
+ case 'e':
+ /* ignore, but accept for compatibility with
+ http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64/ */
+ break;
+
case 'w':
if (xstrtoumax (optarg, NULL, 0, &wrap_column, NULL) != LONGINT_OK)
error (EXIT_FAILURE, 0, _("invalid wrap size: %s"),
@@ -271,6 +278,7 @@
break;
case 'i':
+ case 'n':
ignore_garbage = true;
break;
Only in coreutils-6.10/src: base64.c~
