Re: Naive patch for handling empty input

[Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@freebsd.org>]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2023 at 12:13:49PM +0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> Hi Bapt,
> 
> Baptiste Daroussin wrote on Fri, Oct 13, 2023 at 09:30:18AM +0200:
> 
> > Please find attached a naive patch to handle dealing with empty
> 
> Why would you want to do anything like that?
> 
> While empty input is valid low-level roff(7) input, it is not a valid
> manual page.   While mandoc(1) wants to be compatible with groff
> in manual pages, it is not a goal to be compatible with respect to
> each and every low-level roff(7) feature outside of manual pages.
> 
> > This is probably a two naive approach, but I didn't want to come
> > with empty hands :D
> > 
> > the issue is the following:
> > ./mandoc </dev/null
> > 
> > before the patch is show 3 lines
> > after nothing
> 
> I guess which approach makes sense for empty input depends on the
> reasons *why* you want to handle empty input in any particular way.
> So far, i cannot think of any possible reasons.
> 
> Also, where do you want to stop?
> 
> Do you want the output of
> 
>   echo foo | mandoc
> 
> to become compatible with
> 
>   echo foo | groff -ket -ww -mtty-char -Tascii -P -c
> 
> If yes, your patch is indeed much too naive.
> If not, what is so special about empty input compared to other
> low-level roff(7) non-manual-page input?
> 

I was looking for compatibility with groff like you showed above, this
is an "issue" a user reported, he was expecting to have an empty output
if provided an empty input, but if the current behaviour is how you think
mandoc should behave, I am fine with closing the report with work as intended.

Best regards,
Bapt
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