Re: RFC: wc --max-line-length vs. TABs [Re: Bug in wc

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
>> This behavior is not specified, and is currently untested.
>> (it's a GNU invention, from Bruno Haible in textutils-1.22d,
>> which was back in 1997)
>
> The intention of this option is and was to measure the maximum number of
> screen columns used by a file. For many purposes, people are encouraged
> to create/send/commit files with at most 80 screen columns. Or at most 79
> screen columns for others. Or at most 74 columns for GNU texinfo files.
> The option '-L' was intended as a fast check for this metric.
>
> The original mail, sent to bug-gnu-utils on 1997-10-31, had this explanation:
>
>   "While GNU "wc" returns the vertical extent of a piece of text - i.e. the
>    number of lines - it does not yet return the horizontal extent of a piece
>    of text - i.e. the number of columns. This is a useful functionality, if
>    you want to know
>
>      - whether a text will fit on the paper when sent to the printer,
>      - whether an email exceeds the recommended 72 character limit,
>      - (in combination with "nm") how long the identifiers were that made
>        `ranlib' dump core,
>      - etc."
>
> I propose a clarification in the documentation (see below).

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the patch.  I've applied it.
Indeed, I've used it to check code for lines longer than 80.
Obviously, changing how TAB or multi-byte characters are counted
would break that.