re: PATCH -- new option for cut(1) -- whitespace delimited fields

[Ian Bruce]

Padraig Brady wrote:

>> As discussed previously on this list
>> (http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-textutils/2002-May/001215.html),
>> it would be convenient if cut(1) would accept arbitrary amounts of
>> whitespace as a field delimiter.
>
> Well you could put the data through tr -s ' ' beforehand?

No. That would accept "arbitrary amounts of spaces". "arbitrary amounts
of whitespace" includes tabs. There doesn't appear to be any way to get
tr(1) to do the right thing in all cases.

> Actually I'm working on a major revamp in this area across
> all of textutils, so that they all have the same parameters
> for field selection and record and field seperators
> (which could be regular expressions (well see)).

Sounds good, but won't this run into the same backward compatibility
argument as was discussed previously? Until this is ready, the patch
I posted solves the problem for cut(1).

> btw adding new short options is deprecated AFAICT.

If this is so, then the "-w" option I added can be removed, leaving
the equivalent "--whitespace" option, or whatever name seems appropriate.


-- Ian Bruce  <ian dot bruce at myrealbox dot com>