Padraig, Is it absolutely essential? Probably not, especially in shell scripts. But when typing at the command line, I think it's a great convenience. I'd much rather type "ls -lM" or "du -sM" than "ls -l --si" or "du -s --si", though the latter aren't particularly long either. And I think the transition from "du -H" (which is still equivalent to "du --si" in the latest version of coreutils) to "du -M" would be a bit easier than the transition from "du -H" to "du --si" since it doesn't entail more keystrokes, just a different letter. And other two-letter long options have short-option equivalents, such as "--xz"/"-J" in tar.
Regards, Tom -----Original Message----- From: Pádraig Brady [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 4:50 AM To: Tom Trauth Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [coreutils] Enhancement idea: Could "-M" be made the new short option for "--si" in ls,du, and df On 06/09/10 20:54, Tom Trauth wrote: > Since -H can no longer be used as the short option for --si (except > in df) due to the POSIX requirement that it be the short option for > --dereference-command-line, could -M be used as its replacement? > Neither ls, du, nor df currently have an -M option (though ls and du > have -m), so it is available in all three commands. Additionally, SI > is colloquially called the Metric system, so -M has some mnemonic > value to it. Any thoughts? Not a bad idea and -M is probably the right choice if we needed a short option. But do we need a short equiv of --si ? I'm 50:50 cheers, Pádraig.
