Re: [coreutils] join feature: auto-format

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:

> On 12/01/11 18:04, Assaf Gordon wrote:
>> Pádraig Brady wrote, On 01/11/2011 07:35 AM:
>>>
>>> Spending another few minutes on this, I realized
>>> that we should not be trying to homogenize the number
>>> of fields from each file, but rather the fields used
>>> for a particular file in each line. The only sensible
>>> basis for that is the first line as previously suggested.
>>>
>>> The interface would be a little different for that.
>>> I was thinking of:
>>>
>>>   -o 'header'  Infer the format from the first line of each file
>>>
>> I second the idea of using the first line as the basis for the 
>> auto-formatting,
>> but have reservation about the wording: '-o header' somewhat implies
>> that the first line has to be an actual header line (with column
>> names or similar), while it can just be the first line of actual
>> data if the file doesn't have a header line.
>>
>> Something like '-o auto' might be less confusing.
>
> But less descriptive.
> I'll go with "auto" as I can't think of anything better.

-o auto is indeed more apt.
Thanks for the suggestion.