[PATCH] man/man1/iconv.1: Mention that -c does not change exit status

[PATCH] man/man1/iconv.1: Mention that -c does not change exit status

[Florian Weimer]

And that input decoding failures are treated as errors.

Exiting with status 0 is a POSIX conformance issue that was fixed
in glibc 2.41.

Signed-off-by: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>

---
 man/man1/iconv.1 | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/man/man1/iconv.1 b/man/man1/iconv.1
index 2c8ae0d29..111ff9e89 100644
--- a/man/man1/iconv.1
+++ b/man/man1/iconv.1
@@ -55,6 +55,8 @@ is appended to
 .IR to-encoding ,
 characters that cannot be converted are discarded and an error is
 printed after conversion.
+(Characters that cannot be decoded are treated as an error with
+or without this flag.)
 .IP
 If the string
 .B //TRANSLIT
@@ -73,8 +75,11 @@ transliterated are replaced with a question mark (?) in the output.
 List all known character set encodings.
 .TP
 .B \-c
-Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
+Discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
 terminating when encountering such characters.
+.\" glibc commit 6cbf845fcdc76131d0e674cee454fe738b69c69d
+POSIX requires that this option does not change
+the exit status of the program.
 .TP
 .BI \-\-output= outputfile
 .TQ

base-commit: 3c2e9ebe2d5ea15a47c1669f75b280cea42a6f8b

Re: [PATCH] man/man1/iconv.1: Mention that -c does not change exit status

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 6/5/25 8:46 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> And that input decoding failures are treated as errors.
> 
> Exiting with status 0 is a POSIX conformance issue that was fixed
> in glibc 2.41.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>

Confirmed 6cbf845fcdc76131d0e674cee454fe738b69c69d is the correct glibc
git commit for this fix.

Confirmed it was fixed in glibc 2.41 along with several other iconv fixes.

Confirmed issue 8 contains the same language for -c and exit status must not change.

Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>

> ---
>   man/man1/iconv.1 | 7 ++++++-
>   1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/man/man1/iconv.1 b/man/man1/iconv.1
> index 2c8ae0d29..111ff9e89 100644
> --- a/man/man1/iconv.1
> +++ b/man/man1/iconv.1
> @@ -55,6 +55,8 @@ is appended to
>   .IR to-encoding ,
>   characters that cannot be converted are discarded and an error is
>   printed after conversion.
> +(Characters that cannot be decoded are treated as an error with
> +or without this flag.)
>   .IP
>   If the string
>   .B //TRANSLIT
> @@ -73,8 +75,11 @@ transliterated are replaced with a question mark (?) in the output.
>   List all known character set encodings.
>   .TP
>   .B \-c
> -Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
> +Discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
>   terminating when encountering such characters.
> +.\" glibc commit 6cbf845fcdc76131d0e674cee454fe738b69c69d
> +POSIX requires that this option does not change
> +the exit status of the program.
>   .TP
>   .BI \-\-output= outputfile
>   .TQ
> 
> base-commit: 3c2e9ebe2d5ea15a47c1669f75b280cea42a6f8b
> 
> 


-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.

Re: [PATCH] man/man1/iconv.1: Mention that -c does not change exit status

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi Florian, Carlos,

On Thu, Jun 05, 2025 at 10:41:59AM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On 6/5/25 8:46 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > And that input decoding failures are treated as errors.
> > 
> > Exiting with status 0 is a POSIX conformance issue that was fixed
> > in glibc 2.41.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
> 
> Confirmed 6cbf845fcdc76131d0e674cee454fe738b69c69d is the correct glibc
> git commit for this fix.
> 
> Confirmed it was fixed in glibc 2.41 along with several other iconv fixes.
> 
> Confirmed issue 8 contains the same language for -c and exit status must not change.
> 
> Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>

Thanks for the patch and the review!  I've applied the patch and review
tag.
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/src/alx/linux/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?h=contrib&id=b76a6fb88c3155de5ddb5fc42787aa3ee142b166>

> 
> > ---
> >   man/man1/iconv.1 | 7 ++++++-
> >   1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/man/man1/iconv.1 b/man/man1/iconv.1
> > index 2c8ae0d29..111ff9e89 100644
> > --- a/man/man1/iconv.1
> > +++ b/man/man1/iconv.1
> > @@ -55,6 +55,8 @@ is appended to
> >   .IR to-encoding ,
> >   characters that cannot be converted are discarded and an error is
> >   printed after conversion.
> > +(Characters that cannot be decoded are treated as an error with
> > +or without this flag.)

I've amended this to break the line in a more appropriate place:

+(Characters that cannot be decoded are treated as an error
+with or without this flag.)

See man-pages(7):

$ MANWIDTH=72 man man-pages | sed -n '/Use semantic newlines/,/^$/p'
   Use semantic newlines
     In the source of a manual page, new sentences should be started on
     new lines, long sentences should be split  into  lines  at  clause
     breaks  (commas,  semicolons, colons, and so on), and long clauses
     should be split at phrase boundaries.  This convention,  sometimes
     known as "semantic newlines", makes it easier to see the effect of
     patches, which often operate at the level of individual sentences,
     clauses, or phrases.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

> >   .IP
> >   If the string
> >   .B //TRANSLIT
> > @@ -73,8 +75,11 @@ transliterated are replaced with a question mark (?) in the output.
> >   List all known character set encodings.
> >   .TP
> >   .B \-c
> > -Silently discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
> > +Discard characters that cannot be converted instead of
> >   terminating when encountering such characters.
> > +.\" glibc commit 6cbf845fcdc76131d0e674cee454fe738b69c69d
> > +POSIX requires that this option does not change
> > +the exit status of the program.
> >   .TP
> >   .BI \-\-output= outputfile
> >   .TQ
> > 
> > base-commit: 3c2e9ebe2d5ea15a47c1669f75b280cea42a6f8b
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Carlos.
> 

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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