Subject: bug#9939: Problems with the SIZE description in man pages for <ls> and <du>

From: abdallah clark <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 05:40:21 -0500

Dear Sirs and Ladies:

I am taking a course in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and have met with
some difficulty interpreting the following statement in the man pages
for several commands:

    SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of
    following: KB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, and so on
    for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.

This is troublesome for several reasons. One, it is just too awkwardly
written to be understood on the first reading. Second, the units are
not
consistent with the ISO/SI units-- K and M are in units of 1000, not
1024, because they are part of the metric system, not the binary
system. There are other concerns as well, but if you could clarify the
statement itself, they should be eliminated.

Also, the statement "Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory
for short options too." puzzles me, as I'm not sure what long or short
options are, nor whether they apply to <ls> and <du>.

I'm not sure if your definition of "bug" includes errors in the man
pages, but I do hope so.

I thank you in advance for your consideration.

            All the best to you and yours,

                      Abdallah Clark