Re: merge sort temporary files

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> Instead of adding a new option, I think I'd rather change 'sort' to
> cater to your (relatively common) case, rather than to the (relatively
> contrived) cases like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G' where people should
> know that they're getting into trouble anyway.
>
> Here's a proposed patch to solve your problem that way instead.
>
> 2004-05-13  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>
>
>       Improve performance of `sort -m' on large files, at the cost of
>       making some contrived examples unsafe.  POSIX allows this
>       optimization.  Performance problem reported by Jonathan Baker in
>       <http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2004-05/msg00071.html>.
>
>       * src/sort.c (first_same_file): Do not treat input pipes
>       differently from other files.
>       * doc/coreutils.texi (sort invocation): Document that "sort -m -o F"
>       might write F before reading all the input.
>       * NEWS: Likewise.

Applied.  Thanks!