Hi Eric, On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> wrote: >> would you-all accept a patch that added a "-g" option to set the goal >> column as opposed to deriving it by multiplying the width by 0.93 ? > > Yes - I would welcome such a patch, on the grounds of supporting a use > case currently possible in other existing implementations. According to > http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/fmt/, there is no 'g' option, but BSD 'fmt > 60 70' would operate like your proposed 'fmt -g 60 -w 70'. In fact, it > might even be worth to teach GNU fmt about a non-option numeric argument > being treated as --width rather than as a file name.
I thought about that and decided to not suggest it. I don't like conflating something that is, in essence, a configurable setting with real operands. I'd prefer to suggest "-g" to our BSD friends. :) Were it to be implemented in GNU's fmt, you would have to pass two tests: 1. does it match a file name? If not, 2. is the first (or second) operand a number? (decimal only, or hex/octal, too?) "Icky"
