Re: [coreutils] Enhancement idea: Could "-M" be made the new short option for "--si" in ls,du, and df

[Bob Proulx]

Tom Trauth wrote:
> 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. 

If you just want convenience on the command line then why not use -h?
Powers of two are the traditional unit of measure and makes more
logical sense to me as a unit of measure for binary based computing.

`-h'
`--human-readable'
     Append a size letter to each size, such as `M' for mebibytes.
     Powers of 1024 are used, not 1000; `M' stands for 1,048,576 bytes.
     This option is equivalent to `--block-size=human-readable'.

I don't have an opinion on the use of a different short option for --si.

Bob