col -x or col -h?

David Brown david at varian.UUCP
Fri Jun 14 04:19:16 AEST 1985


In all documentation I've seen for the col command (v7, sIII, sV, 4.1bsd,
4.2bsd, 2.9bsd), it is stated that:

    Col normally converts white space to tabs to shorten printing time.
    If the -x option is given, this conversion is suppressed.

However, in 4.1bsd (and 4.2bsd I believe), Berkeley removed the -x flag
and created a new flag -h which has the opposite meaning: col will 
convert white space to tabs only if the -h flag is given. Apparently they
never documented this change.

On my system, I have changed the flags back to the way they are documented,
as I don't want to change all the documentation, and I want any scripts
that I write to be portable to non-Berkeley systems.   Has anyone else
noticed this?

-- 
	David Brown	 (415) 945-2199
	Varian Instruments 2700 Mitchell Dr.  Walnut Creek, Ca. 94598
	{zehntel,dual,amd,fortune,resonex,rtech}!varian!david



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