Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> The pr program has what may arguably be a bug: when used with -F, it >> ends the last line on a page with a newline. With the printer >> here (and maybe all printers nowadays), that causes a blank page >> after each real page.
I looked into this. GNU 'pr' differs from BSD 'pr' here, and I think the difference explains the problem. With BSD 'pr', the -F option affects only whether formfeeds or newlines are used to separate pages. With GNU 'pr', -F also shrinks the header and omits the trailer of 5 blank lines. Omitting the trailer causes GNU pr to try to print on the very last line of the output page, which is a portability hassle: some printers and printer emulators ignore newline before formfeed on the last line of a page, while others don't. The simplest fix is to change GNU pr to behave like BSD pr. I'll submit a patch along those lines shortly, to bug-coreutils. This is an incompatible change, since it will output 7 fewer lines per page when you specify -F; but it does make sense for -F to affect only whether formfeeds are used, not the layout of the header and the footer. I suspect GNU pr behaves the way that it does for compatibility with Solaris /bin/pr, but that's less of a factor nowadays. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
