Re: suggested addition to 'date'

Oliver Fromme wrote:

>John Baldwin wrote:
> > Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > > There's another possibility, which doesn't require a new
> > > option letter at all.  You could add a new escape sequence
> > > to the format string, e.g. "%*".  Whenever date(1) is
> > > called with a format string containing that sequence, it
> > > goes into filter mode and replaces the sequence with the
> > > current line.  That would also enable you to be more
> > > flexible with the placement of the timestamps.
> > > For example:
> > > 
> > > $ printf 'foo\nbar\nbaz\n' | date +'%H:%M:%S %*'
> > > 16:39:58 foo
> > > 16:39:58 bar
> > > 16:39:58 baz
> > 
> > I prefer this of all the suggestions so far.
>
>It's not very difficult, so I created a patch which does
>exactly that (includes an addition for the manpage, too).
>I've submitted it as bin/102609:
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=102609
>
>Best regards
>   Oliver
>
>  
>
A couple of comments:

you don't need to run strftime for each line if the time hasn't changed.
(My original patch checks this)

What is the effective maximum line length for a single fgetln?