Edward Welbourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am used to sort historically supporting a +$num option.
> This would appear to be supported by the present coreutils sort.
> It is not, however, mentioned in the manual page.
The main trick is knowing that the `real' documentation
is not in the `man' page. Instead, run `info sort', as suggested
in the man page:
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for sort is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
the info and sort programs are properly installed at your site, the
command
info sort
should give you access to the complete manual.
The man page is merely the output of `sort --help' in a different format.
And --help output in general is meant to be brief.
> This is related to #294350: having now done some experiments, I find
> that +$n is an undocumented form of -k $(( 1 + $n )). If it is
> deprecated, then the man page should say so (both to help us old dogs
It does say so -- in the real (`info sort') documentation.
> learn new tricks and to explain to anyone who's inherited scripts from
> us what we thought we were doing). But the description of -k (aside
> from being split between where -k appears in the option list and the
> paragraph which follows the last options) is ... probably perfectly
> clear to someone who already knows what -k does ... but was so
> mysterious I had to conduct experiments to find out what -k really
> does. Have pity on the poor newcomers with less prior knowledge !
>
> Saying "(origin 1)" meant something to me, but I suspect a newcomer
> would be more likely to understand "(left-most field is number 1)".
But then it wouldn't fit on one line :-) 1/2
> It would probably be better to say (see below) at the end of -k's
> description, and explain the numbering after "F is the field number"
> in the later paragraph.
>
> Furthermore, in -k's description, POS2 is mis-spelt "POS 2".
Thank you.
I've just fixed that, upstream.
> And the later paragraph appears to claim I can give options to both
> POS1 and POS2; but applicable options would apply to the whole key,
> so this seems somewhat spurious ... though possibly correct.
At least one option (`b') can be applied to either
the start field or end field -- or to both, but it's a little
esoteric and not often useful.
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