Re: [coreutils] join feature: auto-format

[Pádraig Brady]

On 14/01/11 12:42, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 12/01/11 18:04, Assaf Gordon wrote:
>> Pádraig Brady wrote, On 01/11/2011 07:35 AM:
>>>
>>> Spending another few minutes on this, I realized
>>> that we should not be trying to homogenize the number
>>> of fields from each file, but rather the fields used
>>> for a particular file in each line. The only sensible
>>> basis for that is the first line as previously suggested.
>>>
>>> The interface would be a little different for that.
>>> I was thinking of:
>>>
>>>   -o 'header'  Infer the format from the first line of each file
>>>
>> I second the idea of using the first line as the basis for the 
>> auto-formatting,
>> but have reservation about the wording: '-o header' somewhat implies that 
>> the first line has to be an actual header line (with column names or 
>> similar), while it can just be the first line of actual data if the file 
>> doesn't have a header line.
>>
>> Something like '-o auto' might be less confusing.
> 
> I've attached a patch that implements the above.
> I'll hold off applying for a short while as
> we might be doing a bug fix release.

Actually Jim said this feature is Ok to add now.
I also need to amend NEWS to describe it as a
"New Feature" rather than as a "Change in behavior".

cheers,
Pádraig.