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-rw-r--r-- | doc/ChangeLog | 4 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | doc/coreutils.texi | 22 |
2 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/ChangeLog b/doc/ChangeLog index d3b8bbbbb..01cc164b7 100644 --- a/doc/ChangeLog +++ b/doc/ChangeLog @@ -1,3 +1,7 @@ +2006-06-26 Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net> + + * coreutils.texi (wc invocation): Document new --files0-from option. + 2006-06-20 Eric Blake <ebb9@byu.net> * coreutils.texi (sleep invocation): Document that accepting diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi index 9fee7fd7e..67639cea3 100644 --- a/doc/coreutils.texi +++ b/doc/coreutils.texi @@ -2961,6 +2961,28 @@ Print only the newline counts. @opindex --max-line-length Print only the maximum line lengths. +@itemx --files0-from=@var{FILE} +@opindex --files0-from=@var{FILE} +@cindex including files from @command{du} +Rather than processing files named on the command line, process those +named in file @var{FILE}; each name is terminated by a null byte. +This is useful when +the list of file names is so long that it may exceed a command line +length limitation. +In such cases, running @command{wc} via @command{xargs} is undesirable +because it splits the list into pieces and makes @command{wc} print a +total for each sublist rather than for the entire list. +One way to produce a list of null-byte-terminated file names is with @sc{gnu} +@command{find}, using its @option{-print0} predicate. For example, to find +the length of the longest line in any @file{.c} or @file{.h} file in the +current hierarchy, do this: + +@example +find . -name '*.[ch]' -print0 | ./wc -L --files=- | tail -n1 +@end example + +Do not specify any @var{FILE} on the command line when using this option. + @end table @exitstatus |