bug#10281: [1003.1(2008)/Issue 7 0000527]: du and files found via multiple command line arguments

[Paul Eggert]

On 01/12/12 09:49, Eric Blake wrote:
> It boils down to a decision of whether we want to standardize a useful
> behavior, and whether that behavior avoids over-counting, but possibly
> invalidating existing implementations (in which case, it is better
> targetted to Issue 8), or whether we give up and declare things
> unspecified when encountering files with link count of 1 through
> multiple locations (in which case we could make the changes in TC2 of
> Issue 7, and still make recommendations on the underlying goal of
> avoiding over-counting).

We can do both, and it makes sense to do both.
That is, we can have Issue 7 TC2 specify Option 2B
with a suggestion to implement Option 2A, and have
Issue 8 require Option 2A.

> cpio may have a similar issue on overcounting.

Good point; it's likely that many implementations of pax, cpio, and
tar have problems in this area.  I fixed this bug in GNU tar
in 2010, here:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=37ddfb0b7eb41cc3f58bce686d389b1e965e9ccf