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Re: Problem with definition of a field in 'uniq'


From: Pádraig Brady
Subject: Re: Problem with definition of a field in 'uniq'
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:59:17 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.8 (X11/20060502)

Paul E Condon wrote:
> I report a feature of uniq which seems IMHO to be a bug:
> I am using test files containing the following lines:
> 
> tsttmp1:
> 2/dl1/f04             lnk2/f04              Europe but where?
> 2/dl1/f04a            lnk2/f04              Europe but where?
> 
> tsttmp2:
> 2/dl1/f04            lnk2/f04              Europe but where?
> 2/dl1/f04a            lnk2/f04              Europe but where?
>  
> The space between fields in both files is strings of space characters. No 
> tabs are
> used.
> 
> I use the commands:
> $ uniq -f 1 -W 1 -D tsttmp1
> and
> $ uniq -f 1 -W 1 -D tsttmp2
> 
> In both commands, the options call for examining _only_ field 2, and should 
> report two
> duplicate lines in both files.
> 
> What keeps there from being a report for tsttmp1 is the differing number
> of leading blanks in the two lines.
> 
> I suggest a fix for this in uniq:
> 1/ change the documenatation to accurately describe the actual behavior.
> 2/ add an option, -b, to uniq that tells it to ignore leading blanks in a 
> field, as is
>    available in sort.

A few points:

1. -W is debian specific
2. -W is removed in newer debian packages
3. Yes uniq should be able to specify fields like sort
4. Perhaps the following workaround would suffice?
     tr -s ' ' < tsttmp1 | uniq -f1 -W1 -D

Pádraig.




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