Paul Eggert wrote: > On 12/12/11 14:58, Eric Blake wrote: >> "Files with multiple links shall be counted and written for only one >> entry. The directory entry that is selected in the report is unspecified." > > Yes, that's partly what motivates the current GNU du behavior: > the idea is to implement this notion consistently (historical > 'du' implementations do not). > >> But even historically, command line arguments were always listed, even >> if they are otherwise multiple links. > > I suppose we could change GNU 'du' to output "0 X" for a command-line > argument X that's already been seen.
This seems sensible. > This wouldn't address the problem > perceived by the original poster, though. And it's a glitch from the > point of view of consistency. I agree that printing "0 X" for these seems inconsistent with the elision mandated for the second and subsequent encounter of a file, but I suppose command line arguments are intrinsically different enough that handling them specially makes sense. Maybe even as the default. > Perhaps 'du' needs a new option to control what to do with > files that 'du' has already seen before. something that > generalizes --count-links. That sounds like a good way to do it. Anyone interested?