Thanks! I agree that this is much better. Only thing better yet would
be to fix the POSIX standard to require that format by default, and I
can't see that happening anytime soon. :-)
Thanks much for working on this.
Bart
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 6:02 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnie...@gmail.com> wrote:
> tags 511456 - moreinfo
> retitle 511456 time: documentation of -p is unclear
> severity 511456 minor
> tags 511456 + upstream
> quit
>
> Bart Massey wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I hadn' t realized the POSIX standard was so broken that it
>> required a flag to get a guarantee of predictable formatting. I guess
>> under those circumstances I'll just have to get used to writing "time
>> -p" and hoping that everyone's "time" implementation is
>> POSIX-compliant.
>
> Ok, cc-ing the bug log. Now that I check the manpage and info
> documentation, I can agree that it is downright misleading:
>
> -p, --portability
> Use the following format string, for conformance with
> POSIX standard 1003.2:
>
> real %e
> user %U
> sys %S
>
> It would be better to say:
>
> -p, --portability
> Use the following format string:
>
> real %e
> user %U
> sys %S
>
> The default output format of time differs widely
> between implementations. This option (in its
> short form -p) is supported by all POSIX-compliant
> 'time' implementations to retrieve basic
> information in the described format.
>
> Roughly like this, maybe.
> ---
> diff --git a/time.texi b/time.texi
> index c725f8a..8da3727 100644
> --- a/time.texi
> +++ b/time.texi
> @@ -182,8 +182,7 @@ Use @var{format} as the format string.
>
> @item -p
> @itemx --portability
> -Use the following format string, for conformance with POSIX standard
> -1003.2:
> +Use the following format string:
>
> @example
> real %e
> @@ -191,6 +190,11 @@ user %U
> sys %S
> @end example
>
> +The default output format of time differs widely between
> +implementations. This option (in its short form -p) is supported by all
> +POSIX-compliant 'time' implementations to retrieve basic information in
> +the described format.
> +
> @item -q
> @itemx --quiet
> Suppress non-zero error code from the executed program.
>
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