bug#45648: `dd` seek/skip which way is up?

[Paul Eggert]

On 1/4/21 20:08, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 1/4/21 7:44 PM, Bela Lubkin wrote:
> > TLDR: *huge* existing presence of 'iseek' and 'oseek'; most OSes document
> > them as pure synonyms for 'skip' and 'seek'.
>
> Thanks for doing all that research. It's compelling, and I think your 
> patch (or something like it) should go in. I'll wait for a bit to hear 
> other opinions.

After thinking about the patch a bit more, let's omit the part about 
adding new conversions iseek_bytes etc., as I think there's a better way 
to address that issue. I proposed something in <https://bugs.gnu.org/54112>.

So instead of your patch, I installed the attached patches. The first 
one adds the iseek and oseek operands that you suggested; the second one 
clarifies dd documentation, as I found several things were confusing 
when rereading it carefully. Something like these patches should appear 
in the next coreutils release.

0001-dd-support-iseek-and-oseek.patch
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0002-dd-improve-doc-relative-to-POSIX.patch
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