New option for ls(1), du(1), df(1)

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi,

I'm not sure if posting to this list is the correct way
to proceed, but the title says "Architecture and design
discussions", and I'm having a design issue, so here it
goes ...

The tools ls(1), du(1) and df(1) all have a "-h" option
which means so-called "human-readable" output.  However,
personally I think the output isn't very human-readable
either way.  You often get a mixture of numbers with
various combinations of "K", "M", "G", and it's difficult
to recognize the dimensions quickly and compare them to
each other.  Just an example:

Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a    989M     61M    849M     7%    /
/dev/ad0s1d    9.7G     31M    8.9G     0%    /var
/dev/ad0s1e    9.7G    1.5G    7.4G    17%    /usr
/dev/ad0s1f    122G    1.3G    111G     1%    /home
/dev/md0       290M     20K    267M     0%    /tmp

I've hacked a new option into those tools which uses
thousands separators for displaying the numbers.  With
that option, the output looks like this (in US locale):

Filesystem    1K-blocks      Used       Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1a   1,012,974    62,418     869,520     7%    /
/dev/ad0s1d  10,154,158    31,474   9,310,352     0%    /var
/dev/ad0s1e  10,154,158 1,545,718   7,796,108    17%    /usr
/dev/ad0s1f 128,009,212 1,358,600 116,409,876     1%    /home
/dev/md0        297,326        20     273,520     0%    /tmp

With a German locale (my personal default), periods are
used instead of commas.

The patches for ls(1), du(1) and df(1) are available from
this URL:  http://www.secnetix.de/~olli/FreeBSD/ls-patch/
They apply cleanly to RELENG_6 and RELENG_5.  Except for
df(1) they also apply to HEAD (the df(1) patch requires
a small modification because of the recent addition of the
"kflag" variable in HEAD).

Those patches are not ready yet (that's why i haven't
send-pr'ed them).  They're not checked against style(9),
and the option that I used for the new feature is "-,"
which is probably against style(9), even though it is
easy to remember.  For the same reason I haven't updated
the usage strings and the manpages yet (but I'll do that
when there is consensus).

I have a few questions ...

1.  Which option letter should be used (if not "-,")?
    Currently, the following are unused in ls(1):
    -DEJKMNOQVXYejvyz
    They are also unused in du(1) and df(1), so one of
    those would be fine.

2.  There's a bit of common code in my patches to the
    three utilities.  Should that code be moved to
    libutil?  That's also where humanize_number(3)
    already lives.

It is also worth noting that probably many more tools
might benefit from that feature.  "netstat -i" and
"ipfw show" come to mind immediately.

Any comments are welcome.

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  I'm reading the list, so there's no need to put me
on CC when replying.

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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