Re: silly behavior of factor(6)

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps%kth.se@localhost>]

> > Does anyone know of any reason to maintain this silly behavior?
> >
> > (And does anyone want to bikeshed about whether 0 should generate
> >    0: 0
> > or
> >    0:
> > or nothing at all but continue to the next number?)
> Well, if you can factor 1, why not 0 too? If 'factor 1' gives '1: 1', I guess
> 'factor 0' should be '0: 0'. At least it won't break piping to e.g. awk and
> will keep factor's behaviour consistent. If it continues to the next number
> you'll get one line less of output which might be confusing. It doesn't
> really matter, just flip a coin :)

Since the manual specifies "positive integer", 0 is invalid input (it's 
not in Z+).  If one instead means "non-negative" (x>=0), 0 has infinite 
factors.  The manual might want to specify (x>0) to note that positive 
does not mean non-negative.