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Re: RFC: do you use du --bytes (-b) [Re: 'du -b' bug in fileutils-4.1
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: RFC: do you use du --bytes (-b) [Re: 'du -b' bug in fileutils-4.1 |
Date: |
Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:27:21 +0100 |
Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
...
> fileutils 3.16's -b option had two effects. First, it printed sizes
> in bytes; second, it accumulated apparent sizes (namely, st_size)
> rather than actual disk usage (namely, st_blocks * 512 in the typical
> case). In retrospect it would have been better to decouple these
> notions.
>
> How about having a new option (--apparent-size, say) that causes "du"
> to accumulate apparent sizes instead of disk usage? That would be
> more orthogonal. We could then change "du -b" so that it is
> equivalent to "du --apparent-size -B 1"; this would restore the
> fileutils 3.16 behavior. It seems to me that this would be more
> useful than the current behavior, where "du -b" is merely short for
> "du -B 1", as that is not much of an abbreviation.
>
> If we do this, the documentation should mention that the apparent size
> can be either more or less than the actual disk usage, due to holes in
> files, internal fragmentation, indirect blocks, and the like.
Thanks, Paul!
I've done all that.