Subject: bug#10281: change in behavior of du with multiple arguments (commit efe53cc)

From: Jim Meyering <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:09:56 +0100

Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 12/12/11 04:50, Kamil Dudka wrote:
>> Was such a change in behavior intended?  I am asking as I was not able to
>> find it documented anywhere.
>
> It was intended, as it provides useful functionality that
> can't be done if hard links aren't tracked across arguments,
> whereas the reverse isn't true.  It's documented in
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#du-invocation>,
> which says:
>
>   If two or more hard links point to the same file,
>   only one of the hard links is counted. The file
>   argument order affects which links are counted,
>   and changing the argument order may change the
>   numbers that du outputs.
>
> Perhaps this isn't sufficiently clear, and if so,
> suggestions for improvements are welcome.

FYI, Kamil's original mail never to have reached the mailing list[*],
in spite of reaching debbugs and acquiring a bug number and then going
on to reach Paul (the Cc'd recipient).

Kamil or Paul, would you please post the original, for the record?

Jim

[*] Ward Vandewege confirmed that the message reached debbugs but
somehow was not passed on to eggs.gnu.org.