GNU bug report logs - #58521
human readable still wrong output (after 20+ years?)

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From: help-debbugs <at> gnu.org (GNU bug Tracking System)
To: chandler <scar <at> riseup.net>
Subject: bug#58521: closed (Re: bug#58521: human readable still wrong
 output (after 20+ years?))
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2023 20:30:03 +0000

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Your bug report

#58521: human readable still wrong output (after 20+ years?)

which was filed against the coreutils package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to 58521 <at> debbugs.gnu.org.

-- 
58521: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=58521
GNU Bug Tracking System
Contact help-debbugs <at> gnu.org with problems

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From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
To: chandler <scar <at> riseup.net>
Cc: 58521-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#58521: human readable still wrong output (after 20+ years?)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2023 12:28:54 -0800

On 2022-10-14 09:24, chandler wrote:
> Please no excuses about how this will break other programs

Unfortunately backward-compatibility concerns are real, which means 
we're not likely to make a big change to -h's behavior at this point. 
You can use --si instead.

Assuming you're talking about 'df' and 'du', neither -h nor --si follows 
the SI standard, since they both output prefixes without units. So this 
is not a question of conforming to any standard.

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From: chandler <scar <at> riseup.net>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: human readable still wrong output (after 20+ years?)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 09:24:07 -0700

The failure to use correct prefixes is still a cause for major confusion amongst individuals especially when sharing data, and especially when other programs are involved that do correctly report file sizes. K, M, G, T, etc. have NEVER referred to base-2 values until they were incorrectly introduced into the computing world, who knows, probably 50 years ago or more. Someday maybe all computer programs will properly report file sizes. Please make corrections so that '-h' flag correctly uses prefixes Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti, etc. Or change -h default behavior to report base-10 values and add another flag to report base-2 values+prefixes. Please no excuses about how this will break other programs, that is up to their maintainers to fix given the corrected output.

Please no suggestions for users to make changes to the default environment to fix wrong output. -- System Information: Debian Release: bookworm/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages coreutils depends on: ii libacl1 2.3.1-1 ii libattr1 1:2.5.1-1 ii libc6 2.35-2 ii libgmp10 2:6.2.1+dfsg1-1 ii libselinux1 3.4-1+b1 coreutils recommends no packages. coreutils suggests no packages. -- no debconf information

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