GNU bug report logs - #14556
suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in -l output

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: smu johnson <smujohnson <at> gmail.com>, bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org,
	"coreutils <at> gnu.org" <coreutils <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in -l output
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:20:32 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

[adding the list back in the loop; also adding bug-coreutils to get a
bug number assigned for 2 doc bugs, and slightly reformatting to avoid
excessive top-posting]

On 06/04/2013 01:44 PM, smu johnson wrote:
> I did reply on purpose to you, but only because I wasn't sure about some of
> the text you wrote in your original reply, and because I didn't realize it
> was a list until now.
> 
> I got the first email address from http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/,
> where it says, "Send general questions or suggestions to: coreutils <at> gnu.org".
> It didn't warn me that sending an email is the equivalent to sending to a
> mailing list.  So I mistakenly thought you were in charge of answering
> emails.  My bad, sorry about that.

My take on this is that you have discovered a doc bug, in that our web
page is not making it clear that our bug reporting address is a publicly
archived mailing list (although this setup is typical for most open
source projects, it is not universal; and it takes an outsider's
perspective like yours to make us realize that we have unstated
assumptions that ended up surprising you).  We could probably add a
sentence or two to the web page that makes it clear that your post goes
to a list, that we are unable to scrub anything you post (so even though
we do our best to munge things to minimize the effects, we cannot
guarantee that spammers will not obtain your address from your post),
and that list policy is to reply-to-all to keep you in the loop without
forcing you to subscribe to the list.

>>>
>>> 2)  I tried the command you ran, but I seem to be getting different
>>> results.  I don't really know what I'm doing.
>>>
>>> sjohnson <at> piggytin:~$ touch COPYING HACKING
>>> sjohnson <at> piggytin:~$ stat -c "%'s" COPYING HACKING
>>> ?s
>>> ?s
>> 
>> What does 'stat --version' say?

> 
> To answer your other question, stat (GNU coreutils) 8.5.

You found another doc bug - I can confirm that the behavior has changed
in the meantime (I see a change in behavior between my testing on RHEL
6.4 with stat 8.4, vs. Fedora 19 with stat 8.17), but do not see the
change mentioned in NEWS.  I suspect the change happened with this
commit in 8.7:

commit ca9aa7596094c4af094edb7eb63648570d53c100
Author: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Date:   Sat Nov 6 13:57:08 2010 -0700

    stat: do not rely on undefined behavior in printf formats

As for myself, I'm headed on vacation for most of June, so one of the
other list readers will probably beat me to writing these two patches
(more details on the list, and supplying the missing NEWS entry).  I
also found this recently, and thought it was a-propos to this situation:
https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/want-help-dont-email-me-directly/

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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Message #8 received at 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: smujohnson <at> gmail.com, 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#14556: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in
	-l output
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:51:21 +0100

On 06/04/2013 09:20 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> [adding the list back in the loop; also adding bug-coreutils to get a
> bug number assigned for 2 doc bugs, and slightly reformatting to avoid
> excessive top-posting]
> 
> On 06/04/2013 01:44 PM, smu johnson wrote:
>> I did reply on purpose to you, but only because I wasn't sure about some of
>> the text you wrote in your original reply, and because I didn't realize it
>> was a list until now.
>>
>> I got the first email address from http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/,
>> where it says, "Send general questions or suggestions to: coreutils <at> gnu.org".
>> It didn't warn me that sending an email is the equivalent to sending to a
>> mailing list.  So I mistakenly thought you were in charge of answering
>> emails.  My bad, sorry about that.
> 
> My take on this is that you have discovered a doc bug, in that our web
> page is not making it clear that our bug reporting address is a publicly
> archived mailing list (although this setup is typical for most open
> source projects, it is not universal; and it takes an outsider's
> perspective like yours to make us realize that we have unstated
> assumptions that ended up surprising you).  We could probably add a
> sentence or two to the web page that makes it clear that your post goes
> to a list, that we are unable to scrub anything you post (so even though
> we do our best to munge things to minimize the effects, we cannot
> guarantee that spammers will not obtain your address from your post),
> and that list policy is to reply-to-all to keep you in the loop without
> forcing you to subscribe to the list.

Hopefully the current text is now obvious.

thanks,
Pádraig.

Message #11 received at 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Bob Proulx <bob <at> proulx.com>
To: 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, smujohnson <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#14556: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in -l
	output
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 09:09:31 -0600

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Eric Blake wrote:
> > My take on this is that you have discovered a doc bug, in that our web
> > page is not making it clear that our bug reporting address is a publicly
> > archived mailing list (although this setup is typical for most open
> > source projects, it is not universal; and it takes an outsider's
> > perspective like yours to make us realize that we have unstated
> > assumptions that ended up surprising you).  We could probably add a
> > sentence or two to the web page that makes it clear that your post goes
> > to a list, that we are unable to scrub anything you post (so even though
> > we do our best to munge things to minimize the effects, we cannot
> > guarantee that spammers will not obtain your address from your post),
> > and that list policy is to reply-to-all to keep you in the loop without
> > forcing you to subscribe to the list.
> 
> Hopefully the current text is now obvious.

I like the new changes.  The text is now very clear.

Bob

Message #14 received at 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in -l output
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:50:50 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 06/04/2013 02:20 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> 
> You found another doc bug - I can confirm that the behavior has changed
> in the meantime (I see a change in behavior between my testing on RHEL
> 6.4 with stat 8.4, vs. Fedora 19 with stat 8.17), but do not see the
> change mentioned in NEWS.  I suspect the change happened with this
> commit in 8.7:
> 
> commit ca9aa7596094c4af094edb7eb63648570d53c100
> Author: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
> Date:   Sat Nov 6 13:57:08 2010 -0700
> 
>     stat: do not rely on undefined behavior in printf formats

I confirmed that this was indeed the point where the behavior changed.

Any objection to a patch along these lines?  I guess it's incomplete, as
I'd also have to edit the NEWS hash since this is touching old news.
Likewise, does the testsuite need to be enhanced to ensure we don't regress?

From ff67e9a92f8ec64b70abffe8524a56f4f5062a8d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 12:46:17 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] doc: mention prior stat change

Commit ca9aa759 had the side effect of changing 'stat -c "%'s" file'
from outputting "?s" to the nicer "1,234", so this is worth mentioning
in the NEWS.

* NEWS: Mention 8.7 improvement in stat.
---
 NEWS | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index cad5eee..bd6085d 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -883,6 +883,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS
  -*- outline -*-
   However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
   the same way as the others.

+  stat supports additional flags, such as %'s for listing sizes with
+  the current locale's thousands separator.
+

 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]

-- 
1.8.1.4



-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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Message #17 received at 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 14556 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#14556: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in
	-l output
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 20:30:47 +0100

On 06/05/2013 07:50 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 06/04/2013 02:20 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
>>
>> You found another doc bug - I can confirm that the behavior has changed
>> in the meantime (I see a change in behavior between my testing on RHEL
>> 6.4 with stat 8.4, vs. Fedora 19 with stat 8.17), but do not see the
>> change mentioned in NEWS.  I suspect the change happened with this
>> commit in 8.7:
>>
>> commit ca9aa7596094c4af094edb7eb63648570d53c100
>> Author: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
>> Date:   Sat Nov 6 13:57:08 2010 -0700
>>
>>     stat: do not rely on undefined behavior in printf formats
> 
> I confirmed that this was indeed the point where the behavior changed.
> 
> Any objection to a patch along these lines?  I guess it's incomplete, as
> I'd also have to edit the NEWS hash since this is touching old news.
> Likewise, does the testsuite need to be enhanced to ensure we don't regress?
> 
> From ff67e9a92f8ec64b70abffe8524a56f4f5062a8d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
> Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 12:46:17 -0600
> Subject: [PATCH] doc: mention prior stat change
> 
> Commit ca9aa759 had the side effect of changing 'stat -c "%'s" file'
> from outputting "?s" to the nicer "1,234", so this is worth mentioning
> in the NEWS.
> 
> * NEWS: Mention 8.7 improvement in stat.
> ---
>  NEWS | 3 +++
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
> index cad5eee..bd6085d 100644
> --- a/NEWS
> +++ b/NEWS
> @@ -883,6 +883,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS
>   -*- outline -*-
>    However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
>    the same way as the others.
> 
> +  stat supports additional flags, such as %'s for listing sizes with
> +  the current locale's thousands separator.
> +

looks good thanks.
`make update-NEWS-hash` to update the hash before committing.

cheers,
Pádraig.

Message #24 received at 14556-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
Cc: 14556-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#14556: suggestion for 'ls' coreutil, comma'd filesizes in
	-l output
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:00:49 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

tag 14556 fixed
thanks

On 06/05/2013 01:30 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>>
>> +  stat supports additional flags, such as %'s for listing sizes with
>> +  the current locale's thousands separator.
>> +
> 
> looks good thanks.
> `make update-NEWS-hash` to update the hash before committing.

Done and pushed; commit message amended to be:

    doc: mention prior stat change

    For a file of size 1234 bytes, commit ca9aa759 had the side effect
    of changing 'stat -c "%'s" file' from outputting "?s" to the nicer
    "1,234", depending on locale.  This is worth mentioning in the NEWS.

    Resolves part of http://bugs.gnu.org/14556.

    * NEWS: Mention 8.7 improvement in stat.
    * cfg.mk (old_NEWS_hash): Adjust accordingly.

As both this change and the web page change are now in, I'm also closing
out the bug.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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