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bug#7241: Possible bug on split ?


From: Ulf Zibis
Subject: bug#7241: Possible bug on split ?
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:51:58 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Thunderbird/3.1.4

 Am 19.10.2010 21:24, schrieb Paul Eggert:
On 10/19/10 07:42, Ulf Zibis wrote:
In many FAQs the small letter spelling is suggested, e.g.:

ntfsclone -s -o -<source>  | gzip -c | split -a 3 -b 700m -<destination>

So IMO small letter writing for "MB" should be allowed
But "mb" is SI syntax for "millibit", which
is a very small unit of information.  Having "mb"
be an alias for "megabyte" would be confusing
to those used to the standard notation.  (Having
"mb" be an alias for "megabit", or for "millibyte",
would be bad as well.)

We have to support plain "m" as an alias for "MiB",
because POSIX requires support for plain "m".
But let's not compound POSIX's mistake by supporting
even more usages that are contrary to SI.

Ok, so the docs should be better detailed.
BTW: this problem is not restricted on the split command, it concerns allmost all GNU coreutils and more, e.g. ntfsprogs.

-Ulf






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