Re: Numerical field labels and --header-in

[Shawn Wagner]

One nice thing about embedding a scripting language is that then you can make a configuration file just another script, saving a lot of effort in writing parsing code and allowing users to do all sorts of fancy stuff in them if they want... 

On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 11:07 PM Tim Rice <trice@posteo.net> wrote:

Hey Shawn,

>I'm a little concerned that changing the current behavior to favor name
>over position will break backwards compatibility... hold off on switching
>the behavior for a 2.0 release?
>
>Maybe we can come up with a notation to say "Even if this is an integer
>treat it as a string that names a column instead of a column number" for
>fields that can be used in ambiguous situations like this.

Yeah, I was wondering about both those ideas too. Wait until 2.0 and/or add a new flag to toggle the behavior change.

I think the main challenge could be how to name such a flag :)

Possibly another idea for 2.0: allow something like ~/.config/datamash/ where users can add these kinds of toggles according to their preference. If we're going to go ahead with a major refactor for 2.0, I bet there are users who will want to be able to selectively force a whole bunch of deprecated behavior, and a config file would be best for that.

~ Tim