Re: Bug#671798: parallel: Passing args from command line is borked

[Rogério Brito]

(I am including the GNU parallel list in the CC of this message. I would
kindly request that the replies to this e-mail kept being sent to the Debian
BTS for documentation purposes).

Hi, Ian.

On May 06 2012, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> Rogério> Do you still get this behavior if you pass the --gnu option to
> Rogério> parallel, as in:
> 
> Rogério>     parallel --gnu echo ::: foo bar
> 
> Yes, that fixes it.

Great, as I expected it.

> Is /usr/bin/parallel essentially 2 programs in one?

Essentially, yes.

> Where is that documented?  As I wrote, "man parallel" only documents the
> GNU behavior (which happens to be what I am used to and want).

Due to an unfortunate name collision, the package moreutils has a command
that is also called parallel.

GNU parallel, to be compatible, also exposes that behavior, when invoked
with the --tollef option. Otherwise, it is the pure GNU parallel behaviour.

The default behavior in Debian was chosen to be --tollef as moreutils's
presence in Debian predated GNU parallel for some time and to not interfere
with users that happen to have both moreutils and GNU parallel installed.

To be honest, I don't know much about the parallel command in moreutils to
be able to provide a patch for upstream documenting the changes in behaviour
that should be there when the --tollef option is in effect.

(Not that I care much, anyway).


Regards,


-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFCAAAA
http://rb.doesntexist.org/blog : Projects : https://github.com/rbrito/
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