Remove some arbitrary restrictions on size fields,

so that commands like "sort -k 18446744073709551616" no longer fail merely
because 18446744073709551616 doesn't fit in uintmax_t.  The trick is that
these fields can all be treated as effectively infinity;  their exact
values don't matter, since no internal buffer can be that long.
* src/join.c (string_to_join_field): Verify that SIZE_MAX <= ULONG_MAX
if the code assumes this.  Silently truncate too-large values to SIZE_MAX,
as the remaining code will do the right thing in this case.
* src/sort.c (parse_field_count): Likewise.
* src/uniq.c (size_opt, main): Likewise.
* tests/join/Test.pm (bigfield): New test.
* tests/sort/Test.pm (bigfield): New test.
* tests/uniq/Test.pm (121): New test.
Signed-off-by: Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tests/sort/Test.pm b/tests/sort/Test.pm
index fbc6c49d0..6bed61b7f 100755
--- a/tests/sort/Test.pm
+++ b/tests/sort/Test.pm
@@ -275,6 +275,9 @@ my @tv = (
 
 # -t '\0' is accepted, as of coreutils-5.0.91
 ['nul-tab', "-k2,2 -t '\\0'", "a\0z\01\nb\0y\02\n", "b\0y\02\na\0z\01\n", 0],
+
+["bigfield", '-k 340282366920938463463374607431768211456',
+ "2\n1\n", "1\n2\n", 0],
 );
 
 sub test_vector