Hi Michael,
On 2014-09-13 15:44, Michael Stone wrote:
On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 03:07:50PM -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
According to upstream ticket #18119, the output of df --si is misleading, since the
numbers it outputs are different from --human-readable, even though the units
are the same:
$ df --human-readable /dev/sdb2
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb282G 66G 12G 86% /home
$ df --si /dev/sdb2
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb288G 71G 13G 86% /home
Bob Proulx made a point that G does not mean GiB nor GB, from which he concludes that the output
is simply ambiguous. I will go further and state that the output is invalid, since G,
M and others are merely unit prefixes, not actual units.
Although this would use more space, I fail to see a better solution than to add
1 or 2 characters to each cell which contains a size. Note that the unit
*should* normally be separated from the number with a space.
I'm not going to deviate from upstream. If they change, then the debian package
will change. FWIW, I'd rather things stay the way they are. The space is more
important (in my opinion) than the need for a constant reminder of the unit.
The documentation is there for people to read the first time, after that it's
just not that important.
If you remember all of the documentation you read, your brain is one of a kind
and should be promised to research.
(Even for the numbers above the difference isn't really significant--the
relative sizes are the consistent, and what are the odds that you need exactly
12 gigasomethings? If you did need exactly that much space, you're probably
better off looking at kbytes or bytes anyway.)
I find it inconsistent to provide 8 digits and more by default, then to say
that precision is unimportant or that 1 or 2 spaces cost a lot. I would say
1000 GB is very different from 1000 Gb. An SSD to fit the first will cost
hundreds of euros more than one which just stores the latter.
Why did that message close the ticket?
--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com
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