Re: RFC: do you use du --bytes (-b) [Re: 'du -b' bug in fileutils-4.1

[Jim Meyering]

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.