Bug 121197 – (coreutils) uniq doesn't support -W switch

• Status: RESOLVED INVALID
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Ultratux 2006-02-01 09:23:03 UTC]

The tool 'uniq' does not support the -W switch on Gentoo (capital W).
However, despite being advertized as the exact same version, uniq on other flavors of linux does, in fact, support it and moreover the manpage reflects this, too.

On Gentoo:
gentoo:~# uniq -W
uniq: invalid option -- W

gentoo:~# uniq --version
uniq (coreutils) 5.2.1
Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Whereas on debian:

debian:~# uniq -W
uniq: option requires an argument -- W

debian:~# uniq --version
uniq (coreutils) 5.2.1
Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Exerpt from (debian-) manpage:
       -W, --check-fields=N
              compare no more than N fields in lines


Reproducible: always

Steps to reproduce:  
uniq -W

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-02-01 09:26:12 UTC]

# uniq -w
uniq: option requires an argument -- w
Try `uniq --help' for more information.

man uniq
<snip>
       -w, --check-chars=N
              compare no more than N characters in lines
</snip>

[Comment 2 Ultratux 2006-02-01 09:30:19 UTC]

I explicitly stated _capital_ W.

However, this bug is invalid. I just got this information:

Exerpt from README.Debian:
  Be aware that the following modifications have not been accepted 
  upstream and should be avoided in portable applications:
  * uniq: --separator and --check-fields

So this is not Gentoo's fault at all.  I'm sorry.