bug#47702: wc man page: first you are talking about bytes, then you are talking about characters

[Pádraig Brady]

On 11/04/2021 02:42, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Man wc says
>
>         Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if
>         more than one FILE is specified.  A word is a non-zero-length  sequence
>         of characters delimited by white space.
>
> first you are talking about bytes, then you are talking about
> characters.
>
> So for the latter, please say
> characters (not bytes)
> or
> characters (same as bytes)
> or just
> bytes
> Yes, even if explained in the INFO file.

You're right that this is under-specified,
in both the man page and the info file.
The above is really characters (not bytes).
In fact as a GNU extension it's printable characters.
POSIX does not specify this, but one can confirm like:


$ printf '\xc3 \xc3' | LC_ALL=C wc --word --character --byte
      0       3       3
$ printf '\xc3 \xc3' | LC_ALL=C.utf8 wc --word --character --byte
      0       1       3

The info file was really quite under-specified in this regard.
I'll apply the attached to clarify things.
Marking this as done.

thanks!
Pádraig

wc-clarify-counts.patch
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