Re: [coreutils] stat: reverting recent %X %Y %Z change

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 22/10/10 18:43, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Part of reverting this change:
>>
>>     stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
>>     mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
>>     %Z directives of the --format option.  This matches the fact that
>>     %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
>>
>> means considering whether to do the same sort of thing with the
>> newly-added %W (birth time/crtime).  Note that %W currently expands to "-"
>> on systems with no support (e.g., linux).
>>
>> I don't particularly like the idea of making stat do this:
>>
>>     $ src/stat -c %W.%:W .
>>     -.-
>>
>> Rather, I have a slight preference to make it do this:
>>
>>     $ src/stat -c %W.%:W .
>>     0.000000000
>
> I prefer that as it would mean less special
> cases in code that uses the output.

Exactly.

>> In any case, I think %w should still expand to "-".
>>
>> The alternative is to leave %W separate, with no %:W variant.
>> I.e., %W would continue to print floating point seconds.
>> In that case, it would be inconsistent with %X, %Y and %Z.
>
> I don't like that.

Thanks for the feedback!