Re: md5sum minor cleanup

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> I installed this minor code cleanup; it doesn't fix any bugs.

Thanks for the cleanup.

> I notice that md5sum's --string option isn't documented; is this
> intentional?

Yes.
It may be safely removed, now :-)
I actually removed it back in 1996, but restored
it right away, probably because of a test failure.
Instead, I undocumented it, but apparently didn't
mark it as to-be-removed in the source.

  Thu Sep 26 21:02:54 1996  Jim Meyering  <address@hidden>

          * src/md5sum.c (usage): Remove references in --help output to
          the now-deprecated --string option.  Support for it will be
          removed soon.  Using this option can provoke a memory access
          violation on some systems because of (unavoidable in an efficient
          implementation) alignment assumptions made by functions in md5.c.
          md5sum.c could leave the option in and accomodate the alignment
          restriction, but this option was intended solely for testing, and
          the tests are now all file-oriented, so it's not necessary.


> 2004-09-18  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>
>
>       * src/md5sum.c (STATUS_OPTION, STRING_OPTION): New enums.
>       (long_options, main): Use them instead of magic numbers 2 and 1.
>       For --string, optarg can't possibly be NULL.