Created attachment 1266775 [details] flat file used as input to this command Description of problem: Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): util-linux-2.29.1-2.fc26.x86_64 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1.col -b < input-file (provided) > output-file 2. 3. Actual results: incorrect handling of highlight strings Expected results: Additional info: Input file is a script output of a dnf script installing packages. dnf produces "no package" <package> "available message and attempts to highlight the "package" name. Col -b mangles the package name.
The col(1) command is not supposed to be a general text processor, it was a roff pre-processor and according to standards opengroup.org: "the only control characters accepted are space, backspace, tab,carriage-return and newline characters, SI, SO, VT, reverse line-feed, forward half-line-feed and reverse half-line-feed. The VT character is an alternative form of full reverse line-feed, included for compatibility with some earlier programs of this type. The only other characters to be copied to the output are those that are printable." The current upstream decision is WONTFIX.
Karel, So, the input file contains other characters than those supposedly supported by the col command? Yes? The world evolves but col does not. Is that your position? George...