>I see Ken's point about using exit status, but I think it's too easy for >a script to `exit 1' without meaning to give a comparison result, e.g. >`set -e' is in place and grep, unexpectedly, doesn't find any matches. >So I think stdout is probably the better channel. I'd like to see it >be precisely defined as two bytes then EOF, second being `\n'.
I didn't really explain this in greater detail, but my thinking was that the exit status would be defined to use non-normal exit codes. For example, 10, 11, and 12 could be <, =, and >. Or whatever. >By implication, the comparison program is buggy if that doesn't hold? >sortm(1) punts to qsort(3) for the hard graft and that demands >consistency; I think I'd like sortm to protect me from a buggy >comparison program. >[...] You know what? Forget I said anything :-) Personally, this falls under the umbrella for "nice to have, but not something I want to implement". Anyone who does should feel free! These ideas all sound fine; I'm kind of torn about the key-vs-cmp program, but I think either one would be fine. kre brought up some good points as well; it might be useful to dig into what you're trying to accomplish under the hood to see if there might be a better way. --Ken _______________________________________________ Nmh-workers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
