I see Ken's point about using exit status, but I think it's too easy for
a script to `exit 1' without meaning to give a comparison result, e.g.
`set -e' is in place and grep, unexpectedly, doesn't find any matches.
So I think stdout is probably the better channel. I'd like to see it
be precisely defined as two bytes then EOF, second being `\n'.
I didn't really explain this in greater detail, but my thinking was that
the exit status would be defined to use non-normal exit codes. For example,
10, 11, and 12 could be <, =, and >. Or whatever.
By implication, the comparison program is buggy if that doesn't hold?
sortm(1) punts to qsort(3) for the hard graft and that demands
consistency; I think I'd like sortm to protect me from a buggy
comparison program.
[...]
You know what? Forget I said anything :-)
Personally, this falls under the umbrella for "nice to have, but not
something I want to implement". Anyone who does should feel free! These
ideas all sound fine; I'm kind of torn about the key-vs-cmp program, but
I think either one would be fine. kre brought up some good points as well;
it might be useful to dig into what you're trying to accomplish under the
hood to see if there might be a better way.
--Ken
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