Re: Suggestion: add the possibility to apply multiple operations to a single column (or multiple columns)

[Erik Auerswald]

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 12:24:42PM +0000, Tim Rice wrote:
> >Ranges like 1-2,4 could be less straightforward, especially when
> >combined with the former idea of providing multiple operations
> >simultaneously. When preparing a test for "mean,max,count 1-2,4",
> >should the test output columns like "mean_1, max_1, count_1, mean_2,
> >max_2, count_2, mean_4, max_4, count_4", or "mean_1, max_1, count_1,
> >mean_2, max_2, count_2, mean_4, max_4, count_4", or something else?
> 
> Ahem, those two suggestions should be different to each other:
> 
> * mean_1, max_1, count_1, mean_2, max_2, count_2, mean_4, max_4, count_4
> 
> vs
> 
> * mean_1, mean_2, mean_4, max_1, max_2, max_4, count_1, count_2, count_4

My first intuition was that "datamash sum 1,2,3 mean 1,2,3" and
"datamash sum,mean 1,2,3" should produce the same result, thus I would
have expected the second ordering:

    $ printf '%s\t%s\t%s\n' 1 10 100 2 20 200 3 30 300 | datamash --header-out 
sum 1,2,3 mean 1,2,3 | column -t
    sum(field-1)  sum(field-2)  sum(field-3)  mean(field-1)  mean(field-2)  
mean(field-3)
    6             60            600           2              20             200

When starting from the combined expression "datamash sum,mean 1,2,3"
the first ordering might seem more natural.

I do not have a strong opinion on this.

Cheers,
Erik