From: dana Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2019 20:11:29 +0000 (-0600) Subject: column: Address fill-order confusion in documentation X-Git-Tag: v2.34-rc1~90^2 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=1ec4c065a204ae175c65488487c6b84a7f55598c;p=thirdparty%2Futil-linux.git column: Address fill-order confusion in documentation Historical versions of column have described the default fill order as rows-then-columns and the -x order as columns-then-rows. This was misleading at best, and the util-linux implementation was updated to clarify the actual behaviour in 3e094e5fe2 (March 2017). However, the other implementations (used by *BSD, macOS, Debian, &al.) continue to use the previous wording, and a user comparing them could easily get the false impression that util-linux column has exactly the opposite fill behaviour from BSD column. To address this, a note is added to the man page explaining the change and clarifying that, despite what the BSD documentation says, the two implementations behave identically in this regard. Signed-off-by: dana --- diff --git a/text-utils/column.1 b/text-utils/column.1 index 9ce5879e50..84243b5bd2 100644 --- a/text-utils/column.1 +++ b/text-utils/column.1 @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ .\" .\" @(#)column.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93 .\" -.TH COLUMN 1 "January 2017" "util-linux" "User Commands" +.TH COLUMN 1 "February 2019" "util-linux" "User Commands" .SH NAME column \- columnate lists .SH SYNOPSIS @@ -168,6 +168,15 @@ New output (since util-linux 2.23): a b c 1 3 .EE +.PP +Historical versions of this tool indicated that "rows are filled before +columns" by default, and that the +.B \-x +option reverses this. This wording did not reflect the actual behavior, and it +has since been corrected (see above). Other implementations of +.B column +may continue to use the older documentation, but the behavior should be +identical in any case. .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR colrm (1), .BR ls (1),