GNU bug report logs - #29604
wontfix

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: man cut should mention no way to do ls -l|cut ...
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2017 17:37:10 +0800

On (info "(coreutils) cut invocation")

‘-d INPUT_DELIM_BYTE’
‘--delimiter=INPUT_DELIM_BYTE’
     With ‘-f’, use the first byte of INPUT_DELIM_BYTE as the input
     fields separator (default is TAB).

please mention there is no way to indicate more than one character,
thus no way to process
$ ls -l | cut ...
and that one should use awk, etc. for that.

Also mention it on the cut(1) man page.

Message #8 received at 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>,
 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#29604: man cut should mention no way to do ls -l|cut ...
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2017 09:46:44 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 12/07/2017 03:37 AM, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:

> thus no way to process
> $ ls -l | cut ...
> and that one should use awk, etc. for that.

Let's step back a bit. We recommend that you NEVER parse ls output, as
it is inherently ambiguous and difficult to parse. MUCH better is to use
stat instead of ls, at which point you can get directly at the
information you want without having to post-process potentially
ambiguous output.  If anything, added documents should point people to
stat, not to bad ways of parsing ls.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, attachment)]

Message #11 received at 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni <at> jidanni.org>
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#29604: man cut should mention no way to do ls -l|cut ...
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2017 23:53:36 +0800

>>>>> "EB" == Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com> writes:

EB> Let's step back a bit. We recommend that you NEVER parse ls output, as

No problem. Any example of what can't be parsed would be fine. Even e.g.,

EB> Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
EB> Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
EB> Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

your signature, with differing lengths of whitespace. Whatever.

Message #14 received at 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Assaf Gordon <assafgordon <at> gmail.com>
To: 29604 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#29604: man cut should mention no way to do ls -l|cut ...
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 20:18:20 -0600

severity 29604 wishlist
retitle 29604 wontfix
close 29604
stop

(triaging old bugs)

On 2017-12-07 8:53 a.m., 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:
>> "EB" == Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com> writes:
> 
> EB> Let's step back a bit. We recommend that you NEVER parse ls output, as
> 
> No problem.  [...]

Closing this bug.

-assaf

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