https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=235946
Bug ID: 235946
Summary: column(1): Fill order (with/without -x) is incorrectly
documented
Product: Documentation
Version: Latest
Hardware: Any
OS: Any
Status: New
Severity: Affects Only Me
Priority: ---
Component: Manual Pages
Assignee: b...@freebsd.org
Reporter: d...@dana.is
CC: d...@freebsd.org
Created attachment 202276
--> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=202276&action=edit
column(1) documentation fix
The documentation for column(1) says that 'Rows are filled before columns' and
that the -x option 'Fill[s] columns before filling rows'. The language dates
back to at least 4.4BSD, and it matches the names of the functions responsible
for the corresponding output modes in the source code. However, i don't think
that most people would interpret that wording the way the original developers
apparently did:
% printf '%s\n' aaa bbb ccc ddd eee | column -c24
aaa ccc eee
bbb ddd
% printf '%s\n' aaa bbb ccc ddd eee | column -xc24
aaa bbb ccc
ddd eee
To me, the default behaviour is clearly filling the columns first, whilst the
-x behaviour is filling the rows first.
The developers of the util-linux[1] and OpenBSD[2] implementations of column(1)
evidently agree, since their man pages now state that the default behaviour is
to fill columns first.
I've attached a patch that changes the man page to bring it in line with
util-linux and OpenBSD.
When util-linux fixed their documentation, they also updated the source code to
match. OpenBSD did not, maybe because simply swapping the function names would
make it very confusing to compare the source to other/historical BSDs. I've
gone the OpenBSD route here, but i did add a comment about it.
PS: Sorry if i've misunderstood anything; this is my first time submitting a
bug/patch to FreeBSD directly.
[1]
https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/blob/2698f9ba887cb7e4a204ada72016b1c1192b17c1/text-utils/column.1
[2]
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/c37de4bcf15ea51b5fae88c6b1911bf615329586/usr.bin/column/column.1
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