bug#13453: comm

[Bob Proulx]

tags 13453 + moreinfo
thanks

Dennis Miller wrote:
> Not really a bug per se, but a nice feature would be if a check was
> done to just sort the given files before hand.  If you don't sort
> it, you will get undesired output, and this would be a good safety
> check.

Have you seen the GNU comm --check-order and --nocheck-order options?
These options do exactly what you are asking for it to do.  Here is
the documentation for them from the comm docs:

     If the `--check-order' option is given, unsorted inputs will cause a
  fatal error message.  If the option `--nocheck-order' is given,
  unsorted inputs will never cause an error message.  If neither of these
  options is given, wrongly sorted inputs are diagnosed only if an input
  file is found to contain unpairable lines.  If an input file is
  diagnosed as being unsorted, the `comm' command will exit with a
  nonzero status (and the output should not be used).

     Forcing `comm' to process wrongly sorted input files containing
  unpairable lines by specifying `--nocheck-order' is not guaranteed to
  produce any particular output.  The output will probably not correspond
  with whatever you hoped it would be.

  `--check-order'
       Fail with an error message if either input file is wrongly ordered.

  `--nocheck-order'
       Do not check that both input files are in sorted order.

Bob


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