Re: FEATURE REQUEST: Re: 'ls' human-readable sizes

[Pádraig Brady]

On 18/06/17 23:04, Boruch Baum wrote:
> On 2017-06-18 22:14, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 18/06/17 19:02, Boruch Baum wrote:
>>> On 2017-06-18 11:32, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>>>> On 18/06/17 03:51, Boruch Baum wrote:
> 
> [snip]
>>> want to use it for your option (eg. `--format='%f €' ). Even if you
> Hmm, this was supposed to be a 'euro currency sign'.  ^^
> 
> [snip]
> 
>>> 2.1] The current `h' doesn't note the units of small-sized files as
>>> `bytes', so let it do so, but instead of marking those numbers with a
>>> `B', use a space (a kind of "silent" `b', like in "lamb").
>>
>> You mean, a kind of "silent" `b', like in "subtle" :)
>>
>>> The result
>>> would align all numbers in the column, and it would be easier to note
>>> the `K', `M', etc. markers. This suggestion produces the same result
>>> as indentation, but is just a tweak to the already existing `h' for
>>> small values.
>>
>> This isn't a bad suggestion.
>> A 1 minute patch not considering edge cases to do that is:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> Which results in this output:
>>
>> drwxrwxr-x. 26 padraig padraig 4.0K Jun 17 19:50 tests
>> -r--r--r--.  1 padraig padraig  48K Mar  8 21:02 THANKS
>> -rwxrwxr-x.  1 padraig padraig 441  May 28  2012 thanks-gen
>> -rw-rw-r--.  1 padraig padraig  38K Mar 11 10:44 THANKS.in
>> -rw-rw-r--.  1 padraig padraig 2.0K Mar  9 23:07 THANKS-to-translators
>> -rw-rw-r--.  1 padraig padraig 121  Aug 23  2011 THANKStt.in
>> -rw-rw-r--.  1 padraig padraig 6.7K Jan  1 14:34 TODO
>>
>> Not to everyone's taste I suppose being not right aligned.
> 
> I'll vote thumbs up, since it's optional

True, but -h would be a very commonly used option.
I'd be 60:40 against this change.

> but it occurs to me to ask,
> without knowing the `ls' internals: does this mess up or complicate
> sorting by size?

No, that's not impacted as done numerically before output.

>>> 2.2] Does LS_COLORS operate only on the final field? Is there a
>>> possible user hack to have LS_COLORS operate on the size field?
>>
>> Not at present. You might be able to do some post processing highlighting
>> like my http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/l script does.
> 
> I'll check it out, thanks.

An example implementation is at
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/327fa19405883157ae660236cbc9ad5e

cheers,
Pádraig