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clarification of NUL in coreutils documentation
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
clarification of NUL in coreutils documentation |
Date: |
Sat, 26 Mar 2005 10:45:02 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) |
I installed the following to try to clarify terminology about NUL
versus null bytes versus null characters in the coreutils documentation.
2005-03-26 Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
* coreutils.texi: Clarify NUL vs null byte vs null character.
--- coreutils.texi.~1.245.~ 2005-03-16 15:48:21 -0800
+++ coreutils.texi 2005-03-26 10:38:08 -0800
@@ -3433,7 +3433,7 @@ However, fields that extend to the end o
as @option{-k 2}, or fields consisting of a range, as @option{-k 2,3},
retain the field separators present between the endpoints of the range.
-To specify a zero byte (@acronym{ASCII} @sc{nul} (Null) character) as
+To specify a null character (@acronym{ASCII} @sc{nul}) as
the field separator, use the two-character string @samp{\0}, e.g.,
@samp{sort -t '\0'}.
@@ -3473,9 +3473,9 @@ uniq} inspects the entire line. @xref{u
@opindex -z
@opindex --zero-terminated
@cindex sort zero-terminated lines
-Treat the input as a set of lines, each terminated by a zero byte
-(@acronym{ASCII} @sc{nul} (Null) character) instead of an
address@hidden @sc{lf} (Line Feed).
+Treat the input as a set of lines, each terminated by a null character
+(@acronym{ASCII} @sc{nul}) instead of a line feed
+(@acronym{ASCII} @sc{lf}).
This option can be useful in conjunction with @samp{perl -0} or
@samp{find -print0} and @samp{xargs -0} which do the same in order to
reliably handle arbitrary file names (even those containing blanks
@@ -4416,7 +4416,7 @@ disabled, width of references is not tak
line width computations.
@item
-All 256 characters, even @sc{nul}s, are always read and processed from
+All 256 bytes, even null bytes, are always read and processed from
input file with no adverse effect, even if @sc{gnu} extensions are disabled.
However, System V @command{ptx} does not accept 8-bit characters, a few
control characters are rejected, and the tilde @kbd{~} is also rejected.
@@ -8890,14 +8890,14 @@ are often symbolic links.
@opindex address@hidden
@cindex including files from @command{du}
Rather than processing files named on the command line, process those
-in the @sc{nul}-terminated list in file @var{FILE}.
+named in file @var{FILE}; each name is terminated by a null byte.
This is useful with the @option{--total} (@option{-c}) option when
the list of file names is so long that it may exceed a command line
length limitation.
In such cases, running @command{du} via @command{xargs} is undesirable
because it splits the list into pieces and makes @command{du} print a
total for each sublist rather than for the entire list.
-One way to produce a list of @sc{nul}-terminated file names is with @sc{gnu}
+One way to produce a list of null-byte-terminated file names is with @sc{gnu}
@command{find}, using its @option{-print0} predicate.
Do not specify any @var{FILE} on the command line when using this option.
@@ -8953,8 +8953,8 @@ is at level 0, so @code{du --max-depth=0
@opindex -0
@itemx --null
@opindex --null
address@hidden output @sc{nul}-terminated lines
-Output the zero byte (@sc{nul}) at the end of each line, rather than a newline.
address@hidden output null-byte-terminated lines
+Output a null byte at the end of each line, rather than a newline.
This option enables other programs to parse the output of @command{du}
even when that output would contain file names with embedded newlines.
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