Bug#255633: lintian: check for trailing whitespace
On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 10:02:16AM +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Could check for, if not already:
> Non compressed doc files, e.g.,
> /usr/share/doc/wml/README
If they're below 4KB (as /usr/share/doc/wml/README is), this is OK.
Compressing it does no good at all since it's already below the block
size of your filesystem; it would merely waste CPU resources instead.
> And more importantly, trailing whitespace, e.g.,:
> perl -wne 'print if /\w$/' /usr/share/doc/wml/README|wc -l
> 13
This doesn't qualify as "more importantly" by any stretch of the
imagination. :-) Also, \w in perl is word character, not whitespace
character.
> Could even check for wasted vertical space: \n\n\n or whatever.
This and the above will simply encourage people to make needless changes
to upstream files, thus complicating package maintenance. Furthermore,
it usually makes no difference at all to the space used on your disk
since extra space will rarely push the file size over a block boundary.
I don't think lintian should be encouraging obsessive-compulsive
behaviour more than it already does.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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