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Re: Bug#395430: [PATCH] doc: note the order in which wc counts are print


From: Vincent Lefevre
Subject: Re: Bug#395430: [PATCH] doc: note the order in which wc counts are printed
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:07:29 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21-6193-vl-r44775 (2011-07-01)

Hi,

On 2011-07-13 09:28:55 +0200, Benoît Knecht wrote:
> Well I prefer not using abreviations in documentation (char ->
> character, max -> maximum); of course, those are obvious, but I think
> it's in general better to use plain words. As for line vs. newline, I
> have no preference, I simply used the term from the first part of the
> description (for the same reason, I used the singular form, as in
> "newline count").

"line" would be incorrect if the last line doesn't end with a newline
character. One may wonder whether this is really a line, but according
to wc's -L option, it is:

$ echo -n abc | wc -l -L
      0       3

Since wc outputs 3 for the "the length of the longest line", then
this means that "abc" (without a newline character) is a line. Thus
the line count is 1 and the newline count is 0.

Regards,

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <address@hidden> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arénaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)



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