Package: coreutils Version: 5.2.1-2 Followup-For: Bug #294350 I am used to sort historically supporting a +$num option. This would appear to be supported by the present coreutils sort. It is not, however, mentioned in the manual page.
This is related to #294350: having now done some experiments, I find that +$n is an undocumented form of -k $(( 1 + $n )). If it is deprecated, then the man page should say so (both to help us old dogs learn new tricks and to explain to anyone who's inherited scripts from us what we thought we were doing). But the description of -k (aside from being split between where -k appears in the option list and the paragraph which follows the last options) is ... probably perfectly clear to someone who already knows what -k does ... but was so mysterious I had to conduct experiments to find out what -k really does. Have pity on the poor newcomers with less prior knowledge ! Saying "(origin 1)" meant something to me, but I suspect a newcomer would be more likely to understand "(left-most field is number 1)". It would probably be better to say (see below) at the end of -k's description, and explain the numbering after "F is the field number" in the later paragraph. Furthermore, in -k's description, POS2 is mis-spelt "POS 2". And the later paragraph appears to claim I can give options to both POS1 and POS2; but applicable options would apply to the whole key, so this seems somewhat spurious ... though possibly correct. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers experimental APT policy: (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-686-smp Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages coreutils depends on: ii libacl1 2.2.23-1 Access control list shared library ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
