tags 23110 notabug close 23110 thanks On 04/06/2016 08:19 PM, Ruediger Meier wrote: > This sounds all true, however then these one should also run forever: > $ seq 10 0 2 > > Man page says: > INCREMENT is usually positive if FIRST is smaller than LAST, > and INCREMENT is usually negative if FIRST is greater than LAST. > > This implicates IMO that seq should try to count _down_ if FIRST > LAST > and INCREMENT=0
Admittedly, the above documentation aims at useful constellations where seq really operates as a sequence generator - maybe the wording around "... usually ..." could be improved here. In this case, it's not a matter of how increment is treated, but more when seq ends - which is documented quite clearly both in the --help output (and therefore in the generated man page), and in the Texinfo manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/seq The sequence of numbers ends when the sum of the current number and increment would become greater than last, [...] > Moreover I'd say this one does not need to loop endless: > $ seq 0 0 0 Why? The sum of 0+0 will never become _greater_ than 0. Likewise for the OPs case ("seq -w 2 0 10"): the sum will never become greater than 10. Thus saying, I think this issue is more a confusion regarding the expectations from the tool. I don't see why an increment of 0 should be treated special here. Therefore, I'm marking this issue as "not a bug", and closing it. As always, further discussion may continue here, and we can re-open this issue if needed ... especially if someone proposes a better wording for the above documentation snippet. ;-) Have a nice day, Berny
