[TUHS] Command line options and complexity

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday, 12 March 2020 at 16:22:01 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Mar 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
>> A good example.  But you're not removing options, you're just redefining
>> them.  In fact I find the -h option particularly emetic, so a better
>> choice in removing options would be to remove -h and use a filter to
>> mutilate the sizes:
>>
>>  $ ls -l | humanize
>
> I also had something like that in mind, except being British/Australian
> I'd spell it with an "s" :-)

It's a common misconception that -ize is US English.  The Oxford
English Dictionary, normally not prescriptive, prefers it.  See
https://www.oed.com/page/faqs/Frequently+asked+questions#spell.  I
personally had -ise drummed out of me by my uncle, very much
Australian.

>> And then there's the question why you don't like the standard output.
>> Because the number strings are too long and difficult to read, maybe?
>> That's the rationale for the -, option.
>
> More than likely; as I approach age 68 I notice that I'm losing some
> cognitive facility...  I might start using "," and see if I like it, but I
> see that the Mac doesn't have it (my Penguin is off the air at the
> moment), and having it as an environment variable would be nice.

Yes, currently only FreeBSD has it.  But you have the sources.  Apart
from option handling, it's only:

--- print.c     (.../head/bin/ls/print.c)       (revision 241014)
+++ print.c     (.../stable/10/bin/ls/print.c)  (working copy)
@@ -606,6 +606,10 @@
                humanize_number(buf, sizeof(buf), (int64_t)bytes, "",
                    HN_AUTOSCALE, HN_B | HN_NOSPACE | HN_DECIMAL);
                (void)printf("%*s ", (u_int)width, buf);
+       } else if (f_thousands) {               /* with commas */
+               /* This format assignment needed to work round gcc bug. */
+               const char *format = "%*j'd ";
+               (void)printf(format, (u_int)width, bytes);
        } else
                (void)printf("%*jd ", (u_int)width, bytes);
 }

A quick and dirty fix would be simply to replace the format string.

Greg
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