Eric Blake wrote:
uniq(1) used to have an option for checking only a certain number of
fields. I have since noticed that some scripts I wrote some time ago
have stopped working because the -W / --check-fields=N option has
disappeared. Can it please be put back in?
It's still there in the latest stable version, 5.96:
$ uniq --version | head -n1
uniq (GNU coreutils) 5.96
$ uniq --help | grep check
-w, --check-chars=N compare no more than N characters in lines
not --check-chars=N, I'm talking about --check-fields=N.
I am happy to write a patch
to do so if no-one else wants to do it. Is there a reason why it
disappeared?
Probably because you switched systems or PATH, and are no
longer using the GNU coreutils version of uniq.
I upgraded recently from Debian Sarge to Ubuntu Dapper, and I noticed
that the -W (note the caps!) flag had disappeared. Maybe it was a Debian
distro patch. Paul Eggert has mentioned that upstream uniq has never had
a -W flag. Would you be receptive to a patch? I'm happy to write one.
Matt
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