tag 19240 notabug thanks On 12/01/2014 06:39 AM, John Kendall wrote: > Hi, > > I don't know if this is a bug, but I wonder if there is a consensus on > correct behavior. > The solaris version of cut does not add a newline if there was no newline on > the input:
Such an input is not a text file (the POSIX definition of text file requires that if the file is not empty, it ends in newline); and POSIX leaves the behavior of 'cut' unspecified if it is not operating on a text file. http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_397 http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cut.html Therefore, it is unspecified whether cut will add or skip a trailing newline. > > I came upon this while porting scripts from Solaris 10 to Centos 7. GNU chose to make cut behave similarly to sort, which IS required to add a trailing newline even when the input lacks one (that is, POSIX goes the extra mile and defines sort behavior on non-text files that are non-text only because they lack a newline). Solaris chose differently. But the problem is that you are relying on unspecified behavior; fix your input files to have a trailing newline, then you won't have to worry about it. At any rate, I see no reason to change GNU behavior, so I'm closing this as not a bug. Feel free to add further comments, though, including if you have a stronger argument for why we should reopen the bug and change behavior. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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