On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 3:54 AM, Pádraig Brady <P(a)draigbrady.com> wrote:
One possible issue is that stale sort tmp files could persist
in /var/tmp for 30 days even after a reboot.
I'm going to err on the side of leaving sort(1) as is
and using /tmp by default, as detailed at:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2012-09/msg00139.html
In summary, sort(1) only needs stateless storage,
so lets keep it more abstract and default to /tmp,
rather than worrying about system specifics.
It also needs storage larger than the available virtual memory,
doesn't it?. AFAICS using /tmp is more or less equivalent to
specifying --buffer-size=[infinity] , which doesn't make sense for
sort.
I do appreciate that there is nothing sort can do to get a reliable
cross-platform default.
Mirek