Re: feature request: gzip/bzip support for sort

[Dan Hipschman]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 09:35:52AM -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
> At this point to my mind the only question is how to put this change
> in, and whether to make it the default (with gzip, say).  Clearly it
> can lead to a big performance improvement with large sorts on modern
> machines.

I think it should be triggered with an environment variable, say
GNUSORT_COMPRESS=gzip (or whatever).  That way, it's got the convenience
of a default option, but it's easily configurable.  Setting the variable
to the empty string (or perhaps just not setting the variable) could
disable the behaviour.