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solsTiCe
Asked: 2017-10-27 08:33:29 +0800 CST

Inconsistence between CLI command and nautilus units

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So it seems nautilus/Files and other software are using the SI units to display file size for some time now, in ubuntu.

But this is rather inconsistent with cli command like ls, du,and df that still use IEC binary units.

One could normally use environment variable BLOCK_SIZE to change the behavior of the cli command, but this is not working (EDIT: here on 17.10) (https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Block-size.html#Block-size)

BLOCK_SIZE=si ls -l -h

still displays it in IEC binary units

export BLOCK_SIZE=si
ls -l -h

behave the same or using BLOCKSIZE either

Is this a bug ? Has it been patched/removed by ubuntu ?

Edit: I want to use the env var to define it globally in my .bashrc

command-line

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It works like this:

    From man ls

    -h, --human-readable

    with -l and/or -s, print human readable sizes (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)

    --si likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

    and

    The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of 1000).

    I think the commands work like they should, as illustrated by the following examples (running in 16.04 LTS)

    $ ls -l ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 olle olle 1501102080 okt 19 16:09 ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso

$ BLOCK_SIZE=h ls -l ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 olle olle 1,4G okt 19 16:09 ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso

$ BLOCK_SIZE=si ls -l ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 olle olle 1,6G okt 19 16:09 ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso

$ ls -lh ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 olle olle 1,4G okt 19 16:09 ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso

$ ls -l --si ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 olle olle 1,6G okt 19 16:09 ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso
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