Re: uniq --check-fields=N

[Pádraig Brady]

On 03/03/2014 08:54 AM, Jonathan Sambrook wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The 'uniq' command has:
> 
>   -f, --skip-fields=N   avoid comparing the first N fields
>   -s, --skip-chars=N    avoid comparing the first N characters
> 
> and:
> 
>   -w, --check-chars=N   compare no more than N characters in lines
> 
> but no:
> 
>   -W, --check-fields=N  compare no more than N fields in lines
> 
> Could this be added please?
> 
> Thanks for considering this request.

You're right that this functionality should be provided by uniq.
There was even a debian patch (now since removed I think),
that added exactly that.  However we decided instead to implement
a more general interface between the closely related
join(1), sort(1) and uniq(1) utils, and give them all the
flexible key selection support that sort(1) has.
This implementation is in progress and will be released soon.

thanks,
Pádraig.