Re: Modifiable NMERGE in sort

[Jim Meyering]

"Bo Borgerson" <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:29 AM, Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
>  > Alas, that patch assumes C99, and we can't assume that quite yet.
>  >  Also, it mishandles nmerge values that are "too large" (you'll get
>  >  core dumps or worse on many hosts).  That being said, it might be
>  >  worth adding an option like that (it's a bit specialized, but it's a
>  >  big performance win in some cases).
>  >
>
>  Ah, yes I see.  Thanks for the feedback.  Please allow me to take
>  another stab at this.
>
>  For the first issue: I've replaced the variable-length arrays in
>  mergefps with pointers xnmalloc'd storage.
>
>  For the second: I've introduced a small dedicated function for
>  validating and applying changes to nmerge.  In addition to checking
>  bounds I also added a check for sort_size to ensure that it's still at
>  least MIN_SORT_SIZE after an nmerge adjustment.

Re those guidelines, I've just added this paragraph ;-)

  Add documentation
  =================
  If you add a feature or change some user-visible aspect of a program,
  document it.  If you add an option, document it both in --help output
  (i.e., in the usage function that generates the --help output) and in
  doc/coreutils.texi.  The man pages are generated from --help output, so
  you shouldn't need to change anything under man/.  User-visible changes
  are usually documented in NEWS, too.