[pca] yet another sunsolve today's (31.5.2010) hang up?

[Martin Paul]

dpecka wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 15:39 +0200, Martin Paul wrote:
>> Anyway, what kind of queries are you (or is everybody) using patchfinder 
>> for, that pca doesn't support? Maybe I'm just missing something which is 
>> extremely useful.
> 
> no, you're not missing something "extremely useful" .. i only think,
> that adding another --format %{key} which represents a missing columns
> (#7, ..) just for beginning would be useful for someone.

Ok, now that's not too complicated. For a start, I've added support for 
a new specifier "%o" for --format to the current development release. It 
allows e.g.:

   myhost[martin]: ./pca --format '%p %c %o' total
   Using /var/tmp/patchdiag.xref from May/31/10
   Host: myhost (SunOS 5.10/Generic_142900-08/sparc/sun4u)
   List: total (21641/39004640)

   Patch  CR Operating System
   ------ -- -----------------
   112542 01 2.6
   106125 16 2.6
   112543 01 2.6_x86
   106126 16 2.6_x86

The problem with some fields is that the possible values are of very 
different length. As I want to keep a fixed format (column X always is Y 
chars wide) for easier post-processing, I have to use the maximum width. 
This would make output for the "architecture" column look pretty ugly, 
for example.

> i believe (and i know some of them), that many people are using pca.pl
> just for same purpose like me, so probably adding some sorting
> capabilities in future releases of pca.pl would be also helpful.

Right now, the default output formats of pca work pretty well with e.g. 
"|sort +5" (to sort by age). I'm hesitating to add more options to pca 
unless required, it already has more than enough to confuse new users ..

Martin.