bug#8081: sort -z and shuf -z don't work

[Jim Meyering]

Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Package: coreutils
> Version: 8.10
>
> Hi folks,
>
> According to the man page "sort -z" and "shuf -z" are supposed to
> "end lines with 0 byte, not newline". This doesn't work. Example:
>
> % ( echo 1; echo 2; echo 3 ) | tac | sort -z | xargs -0 -L 1 echo xxx
> xxx 3
> 2
> 1
>
> There are 3 line on input, so there should be 3 lines with "xxx" on
> output. If I omit the -z, then it works:
>
> % ( echo 1; echo 2; echo 3 ) | tac | sort | xargs -L 1 echo xxx
> xxx 1
> xxx 2
> xxx 3

Thanks for the report, but I don't see a bug -- except that the -z
description in --help (and hence in the generated man page) can be
improved.  Suggestions welcome.

Here's the real documentation from "info coreutils sort":

`-z'
`--zero-terminated'
     Delimit items with a zero byte rather than a newline (ASCII LF).
     I.E. treat input as items separated by ASCII NUL and terminate
     output items with ASCII NUL.  This option can be useful in
     conjunction with `perl -0' or `find -print0' and `xargs -0' which
     do the same in order to reliably handle arbitrary file names (even
     those containing blanks or other special characters).

That should make it clear that your example should look like this:

    $ printf '%s\0' 1 2 3 | sort -z | xargs -0 -L 1 echo xxx
    xxx 1
    xxx 2
    xxx 3

I've closed this "issue", since the option obviously does work.
If you want to suggest improved --help wording, please do that in
a separate thread so it gets a new number in the bug-tracking system.