bug#44273: "total used in directory 19 available 5.2 GiB"

[Mattias Engdegård]

1 nov. 2020 kl. 16.51 skrev Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:

> It isn't: that value shows the total disk space allocation, i.e. the
> file sizes are rounded up to the nearest disk block size.

It's often not even the disk block size (frequently 512 or 1024 byte regardless 
of the block size), and in any case that rounding does not add any valuable 
information.

>> but the 'file size' of a subdirectory is practically impossible to interpret 
>> in a useful way.
> 
> We are not talking about file sizes, we are talking about the "total
> NNN" part.

The 'file size' of all displayed subdirectory entries are included in that 
number, which makes it even more difficult to interpret.

If the size field of each displayed entry could be accurately located and 
parsed, then that could be used to compose a more useful and defensible 'total' 
number. However this does not appear likely given the variation in locales, 
implementations and user-supplied options.

Given the opposition to removing the field, I propose that this bug be closed 
with wontfix (again). Let's use our time more productively.