GNU bug report logs - #32242
dd help text lacks information about binary prefixes

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From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Wodry <coreutils3422 <at> runbox.com>, 32242 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#32242: dd help text lacks information about binary prefixes
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2018 12:43:12 -0700

On 21/07/18 11:48, Wodry wrote:
> One can use binary prefixes (iB, e.g. MiB) with dd command, but that is
> not written in the help text.
> 
> I just found out because I wanted to add support for binary prefixes
> since I did not know they are already supported.
> 
> It's a hidden, but valuable feature, since I think, that M is binary is
> hard to remember and can easily lead to confusion.
> 
> Much clearer is to use MiB. "M" is mentioned only for backwards
> compatibility in this patch.
> 
> The parsing for binary prefixes is done in
> 
> gnulib/lib/xstrtol.c
> 
> so this is not dd specific.

MiB is less ambiguous to read, though somewhat less portable.
We should update truncate(1) etc. to be consistent if making this change.

thanks,
Pádraig

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