bin/54878: incorrect divisor in /usr/bin/jot -r

[David Schultz]

The following reply was made to PR bin/54878; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Schultz <das at freebsd.org>
To: jot.3.brinegar at spamgourmet.com
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/54878: incorrect divisor in /usr/bin/jot -r
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 23:42:21 -0700

 On Thu, Jul 31, 2003, jot.3.brinegar at spamgourmet.com wrote:
 > David Schultz wrote:
 > > Some people have also invoked jot in ways that anticipate the
 > > correct behavior, too.  The manpage author was one of them!  The
 > > program appears to be more significantly broken than I originally
 > > thought.  Is there a good explanation for the following behavior?
 > 
 > I agree with your sentiment.  I just don't know how much such
 > corrections would break existing usage or portability.  Perhaps the
 > correction should be under a new flag, say -R, so that the -r flag
 > is bug for bug compatible.
 
 On the one hand, it's hard to justify breaking POLA, and on the
 other hand, this program has obvious bugs and gross
 inconsistencies between its documented and actual behavior.
 If I had the time for it, I'd probably do something sick and
 twisted and write a replacement called delta(1).  ;-)
 In the mean time, I'm happy to apply your suggested change if
 you like, but that would only make jot a little bit less wrong.
 
 > Explanation of behavior (not necessarily good):
 [...]
 
 Thanks.  I understand the rounding; I was really looking for a
 rationalization of the behavior.  Most likely there isn't one.  :-P