bug#11187: fmt: doesn't understand multibyte characters (UTF-8)

"Dmitry E. Oboukhov" <[email protected]> Thu, 5 Mar 2026 17:09:48 +0300

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs
Message-ID	<aamOrLDMpIEY5206@nbw>

On 12:49 Wed 04 Mar     , Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 2026-03-04 11:58, Dmitry E. Oboukhov wrote:
> 
> > If 'fmt' is a "useless program" that only exists because it's a
> > "hassle to remove," then why is it still being shipped in 2025/2026
> 
> For backwards compability of course. Removing it would be more trouble than
> keeping it.
> 
> Bringing AIs into this is a red herring. If you're naively trusting a dumb
> AI to do your work, what do you expect?

I wasn't "naively trusting" the AI; I was testing it. And through that
test, I discovered that Coreutils is still mentally living in 1970. My
only real "naive trust" was in Coreutils itself. It was a genuine
shock to find such a decaying state of affairs in what is supposed to
be the bedrock of Unix-like systems. 

As it turns out, fourteen years ago there were people who wanted to
fix this. Alas, the snobbery of the maintainers didn't allow it.

You can sneer at AI all you want, but AI is now your most active user.
Everyone else has either moved to IDEs or uses their own scripts (like
I do). So, instead of attacking the AI, perhaps you should ask it for
advice: "How do I add a --unicode option to 'fmt'?" 

I am certain it could provide a patch that guarantees backward
compatibility without breaking your precious LC_ALL=C performance. Try
it! Don't sit in your shell like a hermit. The world moved on to
multibyte characters decades ago; it's time for 'fmt' to join us.

Best regards,
A user who expected more from "2025" software.

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 833 B)