Re: kilo is k and not K

[Philip Rowlands]

(re-adding bug-coreutils again)

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Francky Leyn wrote:

[snipped]

> > 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-,
>
> correct
>
> > contrary to the NIST webpage I'm reading.
>
> Can you give me that URL?
> What is written wrong there?

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html specifies "Ki" as the 
symbol for kibi-.

> > 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 get different output:
>
>       -h, --human-readable
>              print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
>
>      --si   likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

That's the manpage, generated from the --help output of ls. The quote I 
gave is from the info documentation.

> I think it would be good to incorporate your above explanation in the 
> man page, and correct the bug. It would clarify much.

The discrepancy ("such as 'MB'") doesn't exist in the manpage, only in 
the info docs.


Cheers,
Phil