Re: kilo is k and not K

[Philip Rowlands]

(re-adding bug-coreutils - please keep discussion on-list)

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Francky Leyn wrote:

> > If you prefer SI-formatted output, the --si option is probably the right 
> > choice, and does what you request.
>
> Implementing this as an option is...
> The default should be SI.
> M$ also uses K. Unfortionatly I don't know who to contact there
>
> I hope you realise you are wrong and that --si should be the default, 
> and that you will change the program accordingly. The standard is what 
> it is, and the coreutils should respect the standard by default.

Having --si be the default would change the well-known output of ls; not 
only the K/k suffix, but the units themselves are governed by this 
setting (powers of 1000 vs 1024).

But that's not quite your point (that "K" is never desirable). "K" in 
the displayed -h output represents a kibi-, symbol Ki (see 
lib/human.c), truncated. Arguably this isn't perfect, but it seems a 
step in the wrong direction to use "k" to indicate kibi-, contrary to 
the NIST webpage I'm reading.

There is a slight bug in the documentation of ls, "What information is 
listed":
`--si'
     Append an SI-style abbreviation to each size, such as `MB' for
     megabytes.  Powers of 1000 are used, not 1024; `MB' stands for
     1,000,000 bytes.  This option is equivalent to `--block-size=si'.
     Use the `-h' or `--human-readable' option if you prefer powers of
     1024.

I don't believe (rather, have never seen) ls uses a 2-letter suffix for 
size.


Cheers,
Phil