12 Mar
2020
12 Mar
'20
4:56 a.m.
On Wednesday, 11 March 2020 at 14:18:08 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
The "ls" command for example really needs an option-ectomy; I find that I
don't really care about the exact number of bytes there are in a file as
the nearest KiB or MiB (or even GiB) is usually good enough, so I'd be
happy if "-h" was the default with some way to turn it off (yes, I know
that it's occasionally useful to add them all up in a column, but that
won't tell you how many media blocks are required).
A good example. But you're not removing options, you're just
redefining them. In fact I find the -h option particularly emetic, so
a better choice in removing options would be to remove -h and use a
filter to mutilate the sizes:
$ ls -l | humanize
But that's a pain, isn't it? That's why there's a -h option for
people who like it. Note that you can't do it the other way round:
you can't get the exact size from -h output.
And then there's the question why you don't like the standard output.
Because the number strings are too long and difficult to read, maybe?
That's the rationale for the -, option.
Quickly now, without looking: which option shows
unprintable
characters in a filename? Unless you use it regularly (in which
case you have real problems) you would have to look it up; I find
that "ls ... | od -bc" to be quicker, especially on filenames with
trailing blanks etc (which "-B" won't show).
This is arguably a bug in the -B option. I certainly don't think the
pipe notation is quicker. But it's nice to have both alternatives.
Greg
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