Re: bin/57252: wc

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

    Date:        Thu,  2 Mar 2023 08:05:00 +0000 (UTC)
    From:        marc%fege.net@localhost
    Message-ID:  <20230302080500.669DD1A923C%mollari.NetBSD.org@localhost>

  | the "wc" command does not behave as POSIX demands: POSIX requires
  | the outputted figures to be tabbed by the actual horizontal tab character.

Nonsense.   It requires nothing of the kind.   If you believe otherwise
please quote the text which says so.


rvp%SDF.ORG@localhost said:
  |  And, SUSv4 2018 actually recommends a single space instead of tabs:

No, it doesn't do that either.

This:
  |       STDOUT
  |          By default, the standard output shall contain an entry for each
  |          input file of the form:
  |             "%d %d %d %s\n", <newlines>, <words>, <bytes>, <file>

needs to be read in combination with XCU 1.4 (Utility Description Details)
where (in the section on STDOUT) it says:

	Record formats are described in a notation similar to that used
	by the C-language function, printf( ). See XBD Chapter 5 (on page ...)
	for a description of this notation.

I omitted the page number from here, as that varies from version to
version, the one I cut this from is not easily available (and page numbers
are not applicable to the web version most people access).

XBD 5 (File Format Notation) describes a (modified) printf specification
which is used throughout the standard, in that:

	The following characters have the following special meaning
        in the format string:

	' ' (An empty character position.) Represents one or more <blank>
	characters.

There's also a delta char (which I don't know how to type...) which
is used when a literal space is required (one space for one delta in the
format string).   That is rarely used.

<blank> is space or tab.   So when the format string in the STDOUT section
of a utility description says "%d %d" what it means is two decimal integers,
separated by (at least one) white space characters - any number of spaces or
tabs, in any order, is OK.

rvp%SDF.ORG@localhost said:
  |  Well, those extra spaces are annoying, but, you can get rid of them
  |  pretty easily like this:
  |    $ x=$(x=$(wc -l < /etc/motd); echo $x)

It is a lot easier than that, without requiring 2 subshells:

	x=$(( $( wc -l < /etc/motd ) ))

kre