Re: uniq: missing option -W / --check-fields=N

[Pádraig Brady]

Matt Keenan wrote:
> 
> Paul Eggert wrote:
> 
>> Matt Keenan <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> Paul Eggert has mentioned that upstream uniq has never had a -W
>>> flag. Would you be receptive to a patch?
>>>     
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure.  Does any distribution other than Debian-derived
>> distributions have it?  More importantly, what's it used for and
>> useful for?
>>   
> 
> The main purpose is so that checking can be done against fields as
> opposed to just characters (think of fields that have an inconsistent
> number of characters). The use I have for it is to get the final count
> for the number of pages for a given CUPS job from the CUPS page_log
> file. Making a patch from the debian sources is not a difficult task and
> I can provide one if necessary.

It would be great if one could specify fields (keys)
like one can for the sort utility.

Pádraig.