> Am 18.08.2016 um 13:16 schrieb Pádraig Brady <[email protected]>: > > On 18/08/16 11:27, Reuti wrote: >> Hi, >> >> looking in the man page of `dd` for multiplicative suffixes I understand >> that e.g. "K =1024". What I don't understand is the specification: >> >> xM =M GB =1000*1000*1000 >> >> between two commas. Is there a comma missing, or is the "xM =M" there by >> accident? It even reads this way in coreutils 8.25. > > Yes a missing comma, which was not needed in --help output,
Thx, I see. I assume that originally in the --help output the second line mentioning G... was just not there, and "xM =M" was special (at that time, before multiplication was introduced). > but due to wrapping is needed for the man page. Fixed in: > http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=v8.25-56-g3e71b06 > > NxM is calculated, so `dd count=10x12` processes 120 blocks. I find this confusing as "M" refers to 12 here, not 1000 (I would never read the man page as "xM = times M" and replace "M" by an integer. As the multiplication is nowhere explained (I didn't know about it), maybe the "xM =M" should be left out and a phrase similar to the one in the BSD man page of `dd` added: "Two or more numbers with or w/o multiplicative suffixes may be separated by an `x' to indicate a product." (With the special case, that "k" can be used with both multiplicators in lower and upper case in the same way AFAICS.) -- Reuti
