Re: [PATCH] Re: wc --no-total option

[Jim Meyering]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 14:53 Pádraig Brady <P@draigbrady.com> wrote:

> On 12/09/2022 10:20, David Pinto wrote:
> > On Sun, 26 Jun 2022 at 00:49, David Pinto <carandraug+dev@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> A couple of years ago [1] someone made a feature request for a wc
> >> option that would skip the total line when processing multiple files.
> >> I didn't see anyone commenting against it and it is something that I'm
> >> constantly hacking with `head -n-1`.
> >>
> >> I've attached a patch that implements a new `--no-total` option to wc.
> >> I believe this patch to be trivial enough that I can't claim copyright
> >> for anything.
> >>
> >> Best regards
> >> David
> >>
> >> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2015-11/msg00064.html
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > It's been almost 3 months without any reply.  I hope it's OK to bump
> > it again.  I've just changed the subject line to make it clear there
> > is a patch attached.
>
> Thanks for the bump.
>
> This is one of those marginal ones since
> there is no extra functionality provided
> by bringing the logic within the utility.
>
> The following function would achieve the desired functionality:
>
>    wc-no-total() { wc "$@" /dev/null | head -n-2; }
>
> Since it's easy enough to achieve with a single extra processing step,
> Given the above, I'd be 60:40 against adding a --no-total option.
> But thinking more, the above is awkward to combine with the --files0-from
> option.
> So you'd need a separate invocation in that case like:
>
>    { find files -print0; printf '%s\0' /dev/null; } |
>    wc --files0-from=- |
>    head -n2
>
> Even though there is still no extra functionality,
> the above is starting to get a bit obtuse.
>
> If we lifted the restriction with --files0-from
> to also allow file names to be specified on the command line
> (and for those to be processed after stdin),
> it would mean the wc-no-total() function above would be general,
> and would work for all wc invocations.
>
> Though a --no-total option is looking more appealing
> given the above considerations. I.e. that the
> wc-no-total() implementation isn't obvious,
> and we'd have to change wc anyway to make it general.
>
> So I'd be 55:45 for adding this option.
>

Good arguments. +1

>