On 2/22/22 09:29, Pádraig Brady wrote:
That is a more concise and direct way to achieve the same functionality.
+1
I guess we should remove docs for the other options,
but leave support there for backwards compat.
Sounds good, I installed the attached and am closing the bug report.From 155cc945db54ab541594f3a59cfe808bc9aea3fd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2022 18:27:09 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] dd: counts ending in "B" now count bytes
This implements my suggestion in Bug#54112.
* src/dd.c (usage): Document the change.
(parse_integer, scanargs): Implement the change.
Omit some now-obsolete checks for invalid flags.
* tests/dd/bytes.sh: Test the new behavior, while retaining
checks for the now-obsolete usage.
* tests/dd/nocache_eof.sh: Avoid now-obsolete usage.
---
NEWS| 6 +++
doc/coreutils.texi | 53 ++-
src/dd.c| 114
tests/dd/bytes.sh | 67 ---
tests/dd/nocache_eof.sh | 2 +-
5 files changed, 116 insertions(+), 126 deletions(-)
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index de03f0d47..b6713bfc5 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -60,6 +60,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS-*- outline -*-
dd now supports the aliases iseek=N for skip=N, and oseek=N for seek=N,
like FreeBSD and other operating systems.
+ dd now counts bytes instead of blocks if a block count ends in "B".
+ For example, 'dd count=100KiB' now copies 100 KiB of data, not
+ 102,400 blocks of data. The flags count_bytes, skip_bytes and
+ seek_bytes are therefore obsolescent and are no longer documented,
+ though they still work.
+
timeout --foreground --kill-after=... will now exit with status 137
if the kill signal was sent, which is consistent with the behavior
when the --foreground option is not specified. This allows users to
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 5419c61ef..641680e11 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -9268,9 +9268,9 @@ use @var{bytes} as the fixed record length.
@opindex skip
@opindex iseek
Skip @var{n} @samp{ibs}-byte blocks in the input file before copying.
-With @samp{iflag=skip_bytes}, interpret @var{n}
+If @var{n} ends in the letter @samp{B}, interpret @var{n}
as a byte count rather than a block count.
-(The @samp{iseek=} spelling is an extension to POSIX.)
+(@samp{B} and the @samp{iseek=} spelling are GNU extensions to POSIX.)
@item seek=@var{n}
@itemx oseek=@var{n}
@@ -9278,16 +9278,17 @@ as a byte count rather than a block count.
@opindex oseek
Skip @var{n} @samp{obs}-byte blocks in the output file before
truncating or copying.
-With @samp{oflag=seek_bytes}, interpret @var{n}
+If @var{n} ends in the letter @samp{B}, interpret @var{n}
as a byte count rather than a block count.
-(The @samp{oseek=} spelling is an extension to POSIX.)
+(@samp{B} and the @samp{oseek=} spelling are GNU extensions to POSIX.)
@item count=@var{n}
@opindex count
Copy @var{n} @samp{ibs}-byte blocks from the input file, instead
of everything until the end of the file.
-With @samp{iflag=count_bytes}, interpret @var{n}
-as a byte count rather than a block count.
+If @var{n} ends in the letter @samp{B},
+interpret @var{n} as a byte count rather than a block count;
+this is a GNU extension to POSIX.
If short reads occur, as could be the case
when reading from a pipe for example, @samp{iflag=fullblock}
ensures that @samp{count=} counts complete input blocks
@@ -9627,27 +9628,6 @@ as they may return short reads. In that case,
this flag is needed to ensure that a @samp{count=} argument is
interpreted as a block count rather than a count of read operations.
-@item count_bytes
-@opindex count_bytes
-Interpret the @samp{count=} operand as a byte count,
-rather than a block count, which allows specifying
-a length that is not a multiple of the I/O block size.
-This flag can be used only with @code{iflag}.
-
-@item skip_bytes
-@opindex skip_bytes
-Interpret the @samp{skip=} or @samp{iseek=} operand as a byte count,
-rather than a block count, which allows specifying
-an offset that is not a multiple of the I/O block size.
-This flag can be used only with @code{iflag}.
-
-@item seek_bytes
-@opindex seek_bytes
-Interpret the @samp{seek=} or @samp{oseek=} operand as a byte count,
-rather than a block count, which allows specifying
-an offset that is not a multiple of the I/O block size.
-This flag can be used only with @code{oflag}.
-
@end table
These flags are all GNU extensions to POSIX.
@@ -9680,23 +9660,22 @@ should not be too large---values larger than a few megabytes
are generally wasteful or (as in the gigabyte..exabyte case) downright
counterproductive or error-inducing.
-To process data that is at an offset or size that is not a
-multiple of the I/O@ block size, you can use the @samp{skip_bytes},
-@samp{seek_bytes} and @samp{count_bytes} flags. Alternatively
-the traditional
