Re: du reports different results for "." (proposed patch)

[Paul Eggert]

Bauke Jan Douma <address@hidden> writes:

> Still, I cannot still quite fathom the difference
> I am getting with * . and . * , even given that
> there's a hard link in one of the subdirectries.

I see that this aspect of 'du' is not documented.  Here's a proposed patch
to the documentation, which I hope improves things.

commit 134240f6411dd396854ed78a2a0a10ae0c74649f
Author: Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
Date:   Wed Feb 20 15:34:33 2008 -0800

    (du invocation): Document default behavior on hard links, and why
    argument order matters.

diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 40aee6f..a6a6c62 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -9657,6 +9657,11 @@ directory.  Normally the disk space is printed in units 
of
 1024 bytes, but this can be overridden (@pxref{Block size}).
 Non-integer quantities are rounded up to the next higher unit.
 
+If two or more hard links point to the same file, only one of the hard
+links is counted.  The @var{file} argument order affects which links
+are counted, and changing the argument order may change the numbers
+that @command{du} outputs.
+
 The program accepts the following options.  Also see @ref{Common options}.
 
 @table @samp