Re: [PATCH] Mention the new join option --check-order

[James Youngman]

On Feb 17, 2008 12:16 AM, Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:
> James Youngman wrote:
> > +  join now has a --check-order option which causes join to verify that
> > +  the input files are indeed sorted.  The option --nocheck-sorted
> > +  turns the check off (the check is currently off by default).
>
> I'm not sure it's worth adding this option.
> If you know to use it, then you already know the input should be sorted?
> what am I missing?

My original intent was to make it the default, but it turns out that
the coreutils manual documents a "GNU extension" allowing the input
not to be sorted, as long as identical join fields are presented on
each line.   This means that the extension supports unsorted inputs,
so we can't make the check the default, unfortunately.    It's always
possible to deprecate the extension I suppose, but that's not my call.
 Anyway we documented the extension, so removing it would involve
waiting quite a long time.

James.