Re: Support in sort for human-readable numbers

[Vitali Lovich]

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Vitali Lovich <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 5:35 AM, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> "Vitali Lovich" <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for the patch and for writing up your assumptions.
>>
>> The above requirement is key... and perhaps too restrictive.
>> I.e., it makes it sound like your sort could mishandle
>> sizes printed by a mix of output from du -h and du --si runs,
>> not to mention numbers generated manually or by other tools.
> Well as I stated in the assumptions - as long as the numbering is
> internally consistent, my tool will handle this case.  However,
> there's no tool that can really handle a mix of output from du -h & du
> --si in the same stream, since there would be no way to identify when
> the suffix represents 1000 & when it represents 1024.  Any solution
> for this would have to have support for rule-based ways of figuring
> out (i.e. every other line or all lines after the 5th) - but this is
> obviously far too complicated for a tool like sort.  That use case
> would require the use of far more complicated shell scripts to get the
> correct behavior (although I'm unconvinced that this represents even
> an uncommon use case).
>
> The only behavior I'm insure of right now is when there are spaces
> separating the suffix & the number.  Currently, the implementation
> takes the first letter after the number ignoring spaces - which I just
> realized is the incorrect behavior.  I'm thinking the suffix has to
> follow the number immediately (no spaces) and have a space after it.
> There's all sorts of ways that additional configuration options could
> be added (i.e. support for spacing between # & suffix), but I'm
> thinking that those use cases are better handled by having the user
> write that logic in awk or whatever (i.e. my_utility | awk '{print
> $3$4}' | sort -h if there are spaces between the suffix & number).
Sorry - my mistake.  I misremembered the implementation I wrote.  My
code requires the suffix to follow the number immediately.  I'm adding
an additional check to ensure that there is a space after the suffix,
and as soon as my desktop gets an internet connection (sometimes
wifi-only sucks :D), I'll upload it to launchpad (do people here mind,
or is it better form if I post the patches to the mailing list?)

Vitali