Re: who: sorted output + minor usage change

[Pádraig Brady]

On 07/02/15 02:04, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Two suggestions for 'who':
> 
> first,
> the --help text for '-u/--users' option is not clear (IMHO).
> 
> 'who --help' says:
>     -u, --users       list users logged in
> 
> Whereas the Coreutils manual says:
> "-u => After the login time, print the number of hours and minutes that the 
> user has been idle. [...]"
> 
> And posix says ( 
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/who.html ):
> "-u => Write "idle time" for each displayed user in addition to any other 
> information. [...]".
> 
> so, except in the --help text, it talks about showing idle time.
> Perhaps consider slightly modifying the usage text? (that's the first patch 
> attached).
> 
> 
> second,
> would you consider adding a 'sort' option to sort output by different fields?
> The attached patch implements this.
> examples:
>    who -a --sort=idle
>    who -a --sort=name
>    who -a --sort=line
> 
> Normally, piping to 'sort' should be enough, but the fields output by 'who' 
> are not fixed, so sorting with whitespace delimiters is tricky,
> and sorting by exact character position is messy, and depends on the option 
> used.
> Also, for sorting by idle time, the field conains mixed digits and characters 
> (e.g. "." for recently active, and "old" for not active) - not easily sorted.

Initially I thought this was overkill.
Though the sorting is in place and so as scalable as it was previously.
Also sorting existing output is very difficult as you say.
So +1 from me.

thanks!
Pádraig