Re: feature request: sort by human-readable disk sizes

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:

> Justin Watt wrote:
>> It'd be great if "sort" had an option to sort by the "-h" output of
>> the "du" command.
>>
>> For example the current output of du is alphabetized by filename with
>> no options to sort:
>>
>> $ du -h --max-depth=1
>> 4.0K    ./bin
>> 52M     ./code
>> 765M    ./Desktop
>> 12K     ./mail
>> 17M     ./music
>> 124K    ./PDF
>> 5.5G    ./photos
>> 153M    ./public_html
>> 652K    ./ufc
>> 7.3G    .
>
> That has been asked for many times.
> Perhaps we should add it?

Over a year ago, Mart Somermaa worked on a patch for this,
and there was a pretty long debate:

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/6772

Adding this functionality is overdue, so one way or another, I'd like
to do it soon.  If we can't find a better solution, I'll go ahead and
burn a single-letter option.

Mart, let me know if you can assign copyright to the FSF,
and I'll send you the paperwork.

Paul?