Re: Proposed patch - psql wraps at window width

Gregory Stark wrote:
> 
> [Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in -- argh, I'm weak]
> 
> "Bruce Momjian" <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> 
> > FYI, ls -C actually wraps to 72(?) unless you specify another width, 
> 
> I told you exactly what ls did, at least GNU ls. It uses -w if specified, if
> not then it uses the ioctl if that succeeds, if it fails it uses COLUMNS, and
> if that's unavailable it uses a constant.

> $ COLUMNS=40 ls -C | cat
> distmp3.rh3280  purpleNMN49T
> gconfd-stark    ssh-WdHPsk4277
> orbit-stark

I don't see that behavior here on Ubuntu 7.10:
$ COLUMNNS=120 ls -C |catarchive       cd    initrd      lost+found  proc  srv  usrbasement.usr  dev   initrd.img
media      root  sys  varbin           etc   laptop      mnt         rtmp  tmp  vmlinuzboot          home  lib
opt        sbin  u    win$ ls --versionls (GNU coreutils) 5.97
 

That is not a 120 width.  'ls' seems to ignore columns for pipe output.

> > That might make the "I want it always to wrap" group happier, but not the
> > "wrapped shouldn't affect file/pipe". I have not heard anyone explain why
> > the later behavior is bad, especially if we default to a width of 72 rather
> > than the screen width.
> 
> Presumably they're concerned that scripts which dump out data and then try to
> parse it will have trouble parsing wrapped output. In any case that should be
> based on whether isatty() is true, which is related to but not the same as
> whether the window size ioctl succeeds.

Right now we honor $COLUMNS only when isatty() is true.

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
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