Package: coreutils
Version: 9.1-1
Version: 9.4-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

POSIX.1-202x/D3:
        −t char
                        Use character char as a separator, for both input and 
output. Every appearance of
                        char in a line shall be significant. When this option 
is specified, the collating
                        sequence shall be the same as sort without the −b 
option.
so obviously allowing -t '' is an extension.

Manual:
        -t CHAR
               use CHAR as input and output field separator

        Important: FILE1 and FILE2 must be sorted on the  join  fields.  E.g.,
        use  "sort  -k  1b,1"  if 'join' has no options, or use "join -t ''" if
        'sort' has no options.  Note, comparisons honor the rules specified by
        'LC_COLLATE'.   If  the  input  is  not sorted and some lines cannot be
        joined, a warning message will be given.

So given
        $ cat f1
        row1    f1      1
        urow1   f1      2
        $ cat f2
        row1    f2      1
        urow2   f2      2
which are stable against both sort and sort -k 1b,1
        $ join f?
        row1 f1 1 f2 1
        $ join f? -t '  '
        row1    f1      1       f2      1
is all as expected.

But
        $ join f? -t ''
returns empty. What would empty -t mean, anyway?
The empty string can either be found at every position
(clearly not the case here, otherwise this'd be joined on r and u)
or at no positions, so
        $ cat g1
        row1
        urow1
        $ cat g2
        row1
        urow2
        $ join g? -t ''
        row1
which is, well
        $ comm g? -12
        row1

Somehow I don't feel like this is a good recommendation?

Best,
наб

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.4
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 
'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-12-amd64 (SMP w/24 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND, 
TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii  libacl1      2.3.1-3
ii  libattr1     1:2.5.1-4
ii  libc6        2.36-9+deb12u4
ii  libgmp10     2:6.2.1+dfsg1-1.1
ii  libselinux1  3.4-1+b6

coreutils recommends no packages.

coreutils suggests no packages.

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