Re: toolchain/51457 (Incorrect postinstall version-number sort options)

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR toolchain/51457; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: toolchain/51457 (Incorrect postinstall version-number sort options)
Date: Sat, 03 Sep 2016 03:32:30 +0700

     Date:        Fri,  2 Sep 2016 14:55:01 +0000 (UTC)
     From:        Michael Plass <mfpnb%plass-family.net@localhost>
     Message-ID:  <20160902145501.793C27A286%mollari.NetBSD.org@localhost>
 
   |  This is (I think) because posix says that "If any modifier is attached to a
   |  field_start or to a field_end, no option shall apply to either."
 
 I actually wondered about that when I made the change, but wasn't sure if
 any implementations actually acted that way.
 
   |  So to use modifiers, it needs to be
   |    sort -t. -k1,1nr -k2,2nr -k3,3nr
 
 I started to do it that way, but ...
 
   |  but is there a reason not to use
   |    sort -t. -nr -k1,1 -k2,2 -k3,3
   |  ?
 
 Not really I guess, so I changed it to that (before I even got this far
 into reading your message...)   I have a slight preference towards not
 using global opts unless they are (and can rationally) be applied to the
 whole record (so global -r makes sense, as here the reverse sort is wanted
 however the sort gets done - I'd use the r tak on a field selector if just
 that field was to be sorted in descending order) but the records themselves
 are not numeric, just the fields, so global -n just seems "wrong" ... but
 the posix rules make that combination fail, so ...
 
 OK now?
 
 kre