Re: sort: new feature: use environment variable to set buffer size

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Thanks for the detailed rationale, however
> the existing env variables are significant to more utils than sort(1).
> I.E. they're generally system level settings, rather than command level.
> Also sort -S is very portable, even though not standardised.
> solaris' sort(1) has -S and GNU sort is used on most other platforms,
> which has -S available since TEXTUTILS-2_0_10-58-gbf86c62
>
> Note also this thread on the selection of a default buffer size for pipes:
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.general/878/focus=887
>
> So currently I'd be 70:30 against adding such a variable.

Thanks for replying, Pádraig.  Those are good points.
Another is that we have a strong aversion to adding
support for new environment variables in coreutils programs
because it makes formerly-robust usage prone to malfunction or abuse.

Imagine a script that worked fine before, but when someone
ends up running sort with some unusual or extreme envvar
setting that now makes that shell script's use of sort fail.

With a new envvar as proposed, every sort-using script would
have to be retrofitted with code to keep an erroneous or malicious
envvar setting from impacting sort.

Just say "No!" to new envvars ;-)