Re: Modifiable NMERGE in sort

[Jim Meyering]

"Bo Borgerson" <address@hidden> wrote:
> +  sort accepts a new option --merge-batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
> +  represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
> +  When more than NMERGE inputs are present temporary files are used.

I've just realized that adding --merge-batch-size=NMERGE
would cause a small problem: currently, one can use "sort --me"
as an abbreviation of "sort --merge" (the shorter "sort --m" is
ambiguous).  Adding a name like --merge-batch-size=N would
invalidate any existing abbreviations of --merge.

So please see if you can find an option name that does not start with
--merge, and, ideally, that doesn't influence interpretation of any
other option abbreviations.

Also, you need to update the copyright date in tests/misc/sort-merge
as well as updating the 2^31+1 constant to 2^32+1 (to reflect my
suggested int->unsigned int widening).
Safer still, would be to use 2^64+1, in case there are environments
where "unsigned int" is a 64-bit wide type.