Re: New bugs discovered when adding vnlog support

[Erik Auerswald]

Hi Tim,

On 09.07.22 07:07, Tim Rice wrote:
> I've done some work today, and I think most of the issues you've 
> reported have been solved. The following commits are for your bug reports:
>
> ```
> 5111445 datamash: bugfix: Ensure rmdup respects --output-delimiter

I do not see the see the "5111445" commit in git.  It is not shown
on savannah either.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=datamash.git

I'll wait with adding anything to avoid merge conflicts.

> 4a3b349 datamash: bugfix: Allow crosstab to be called by header field name.

I would like to have a test with --header-in, but without
--header-out, because IMHO that seems like a realistic use-case,
while creating this header line that is not really a header line,
but rather provides some kind of description for the table, looks
a bit dubious to me.  I would not call it wrong or useless, but
rather a bit surprising.  Adding a few more words to explain this
"header" might be useful.

> 6dc46b8 tests: Add the test for pcov header in/out

It might make sense to add similar tests for scov, ppearson,
and spearson, since those should be affected by the change, too.

> e3462c5 datamash: Print all operation columns in output header
> ```
>
> I've made additional todo items to solve the harder problems later (v2.0).

Do you think it would make sense to enable and use (part of) the
tracker features of savannah for those?

IMHO bug reporting via the mailing list works fine, but when we
decide that some issues need to be addressed later or a report
turns out to comprise several issues it might be nice to keep
that information available on savannah.

It seems to me as if the "Bug Tracker" might be appropriate:

https://savannah.gnu.org/userguide/?file=ch04.html

I would prefer to give write access only to group members (reports
should go to bug-datamash@gnu.org).

> I'll wait a few days for feedback in case I've made any mistakes, and 
> then it should be time for the final release of v1.8.

I do not see any obvious mistakes in the code. :-)

The man page currently states:

   Some operations require field numbers (groupby, crosstab)
   while others do not (reverse,check,transpose).

With current git HEAD, both groupby and crosstab allow field
names, so this sentence should be adjusted or deleted.

There is no test using groupby with a field name, I think we
should add one.

Cheers,
Erik