Re: du enhancement

[Pádraig Brady]

On 20/10/2023 15:05, Dragan Simic wrote:
> On 2023-10-20 15:55, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> > Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> writes:
> >
> > > On 2023-10-20 15:18, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> > > > On 20/10/2023 00:22, Rusty Duplessis wrote:
> > > > > Would be nice to have an option to append a / to the end of
> > > > > directory names,
> > > > > so that you can distinguish between a file and directory when using
> > > > > -a.
> > > > > Something like -F option to ls.
> > > > It's a good suggestion.
> > > > I generally only use du with single files / dirs,
> > > > or otherwise I use a wrapper that makes dirs obvious (though
> > > > coloring):
> > > > http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/dutop
> > > > I.e. the default output from du -a is hard to parse.
> > >
> > > How about making the output of du(1) colored the same way as it
> > > currently is in
> > > ls(1)?  I'd be willing to work on implementing that.
> >
> > I was about to post the same.  I see no reason why du couldn't (or
> > shouldn't) do that based on normal coloring logic already present in
> > ls.

Yes coloring is a plausible addition to du,
and would make sense to follow the same options, env vars as ls.

> > Are there other tools that could use the treatment, too?
>
> On a somewhat unrelated note, I've been thinking already about adding
> coloring to md5sum(1) and the related utilities, green for "OK" and red
> for any errors.

Something similar was suggested and discounted at:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2013-12/msg00152.html

I would think coloring of OK, FAILED is less of a requirement
than coloring in du, as it can be easily determined from the
exit status of the command.  For example, see
"Highlighting status of whole command line" at:
https://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/terminal_colours/

Also it's trivial to color OK/FAILED by piping the output.
For example you could use a simplified variation of this script:
https://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/idiff

cheers,
Pádraig.