Hi,

I noticed some unexpected behavior and I'm unsure whether it's a bug
or a feature.

When using --untagged with non legacy checksums, the mode flag in the
output is ' ' (space), meaning text mode:

$ printf "hello" | cksum --untagged --algo=md5
5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592  -

However, if I add --tag, the mode flag changes to '*', meaning binary mode:

$ printf "hello" | cksum --tag --untagged --algo=md5
5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592 *-

According to 
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/cksum-common-options.html#index-_002d_002dtag,
--tag implies binary mode. On the other hand, --untagged overrides
--tag and so I expected text mode in the output.

So, is this behavior a bug or a feature?

I'm using coreutils 9.4 on Linux.

Thanks,
Daniel

Reply via email to