Re: ls -s documentation misleading

[vcaputo]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 08:04:46AM +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
> ...
> > Clearly the ls help and manual should instead say:
> > "Size of space allocated for each file, in blocks"
> >
> > Perhaps with a notice in the manual further explaining potential for
> > difference between the file size and size in blocks?
> 
> The description in "info coreutils ls" has more detail:
> (and is usually referred to by the last paragraph of the man page)
> 
> `-s'
> `--size'
>      Print the disk allocation of each file to the left of the file
>      name.  This is the amount of disk space used by the file, which is
>      usually a bit more than the file's size, but it can be less if the
>      file has holes.
> 
>      Normally the disk allocation is printed in units of 1024 bytes,
>      but this can be overridden (*note Block size::).
> 
>      For files that are NFS-mounted from an HP-UX system to a BSD
>      system, this option reports sizes that are half the correct
>      values.  On HP-UX systems, it reports sizes that are twice the
>      correct values for files that are NFS-mounted from BSD systems.
>      This is due to a flaw in HP-UX; it also affects the HP-UX `ls'
>      program.


Thanks for the quick response, that's great the info file is accurate,
unfortunately I never looked at it.

The source was my next reference after seeing behavior not matching
--help and the manual.  Surely those should still be corrected, they
don't need to contain as much as the info page just something indicating
specifically an allocated size.

Cheers,
Vito Caputo