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uniq: exit status not documented enough
From: |
Dan Jacobson |
Subject: |
uniq: exit status not documented enough |
Date: |
Mon, 18 Oct 2004 09:31:16 +0800 |
The uniq man page does not mention an exit status. Bad.
The Info page says,
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
indicates failure.
Oh, well as
NAME
uniq - remove duplicate lines from a sorted file
therefore if it fails to remove duplicate lines from a sorted file,
then it will return nonzero -- unless you clarify the exit status in
the docs.
P.S. just for fun let's compare the clarity of Info vs. Man:
NAME
uniq - remove duplicate lines from a sorted file
DESCRIPTION
Discard all but one of successive identical lines from INPUT (or stan-
dard input), writing to OUTPUT (or standard output).
7.2 `uniq': Uniquify files
`uniq' writes the unique lines in the given `input', or standard input
if nothing is given or for an INPUT name of `-'.
We see the man page robustly bases its definition upon other words,
whereas the Info page puts all of its money on the word "unique". OK,
no big deal. Over and out.
- uniq: exit status not documented enough,
Dan Jacobson <=