Re: du info: do say what's up with the : | jazz

[Paul Eggert]

Dan Jacobson <address@hidden> writes:

>           : | dd bs=1 seek=`echo '2^31'|bc` of=big
>      has an apparent size of 2 gigabytes, yet on most modern systems,
> You gotta say what's up with the : | jazz. Why not using if=/dev/null
> or something.

Sounds reasonable.  Also the sizes are wrong or confusing.  I
installed this:

2004-11-27  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * doc/coreutils.texi (du invocation): Use if=/dev/null rather
        than :|.  Problem reported by Dan Jacobson.
        Use "seek=2GiB" rather than the wordier "seek=`echo '2^31'|bc`".
        Say "KiB" not the (inaccurate) "kilobytes".
        Similarly for "GiB" and "gigabytes".

--- coreutils.texi.~1.228.~     2004-11-19 15:53:20 -0800
+++ coreutils.texi      2004-11-27 01:27:35 -0800
@@ -8818,16 +8818,16 @@ file is the number of bytes reported by 
 or more generally, @code{ls -l --block-size=1} or @code{stat --format=%s}.
 For example, a file containing the word @samp{zoo} with no newline would,
 of course, have an apparent size of 3.  Such a small file may require
-anywhere from zero to 16 or more kilobytes of disk space, depending on
+anywhere from 0 to 16 KiB or more of disk space, depending on
 the type and configuration of the file system on which the file resides.
 However, a sparse file created with this command:
 
 @example
-: | dd bs=1 seek=`echo '2^31'|bc` of=big
+dd bs=1 seek=2GiB if=/dev/null of=big
 @end example
 
 @noindent
-has an apparent size of 2 gigabytes, yet on most modern
+has an apparent size of 2 GiB, yet on most modern
 systems, it actually uses almost no disk space.
 
 @item -b