Package: coreutils
Version: 8.5-1
Severity: minor
The existing documentation for the option:
-R, --random-sort
sort by random hash of keys
This is not wrong, strictly-speaking, but it is misleading: sorting by random
hash *sounds* like a perfect shuffle,
which is what 99% of users want, and sorting by hash is equivalent if and if
only there are no duplicate entries.
If there *are* duplicate entries, then the 'random' sort will put all
duplicates in consecutive runs.
I suggest amending the line to read more like
sort by random hash of keys; equivalent to perfect shuffle on
unique keys
or maybe just say
sort by random hash of keys; not the same as a perfect shuffle
Or at least warn in some fashion that 'random' is not quite what 'random'
usually means on lists.
(I do random shuffle with mplayer using 'sort -R', and once, to 'bias' the
selection to a particular set of songs, I put that directory in
3 or 4 times; I thought I was going crazy when the first such song came up 3
times, which I calculated at billions to one against.
I checked everything until I began to wonder what exactly 'random hash of keys'
meant, and then saw how it treated duplicate entries.)
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers proposed-updates
APT policy: (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL
set to en_US.utf8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii libacl1 2.2.51-3 Access control list shared library
ii libattr1 1:2.4.46-3 Extended attribute shared library
ii libc6 2.13-18 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii libselinux1 2.0.98-1.1 SELinux runtime shared libraries
coreutils recommends no packages.
coreutils suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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