Why is `--human-readable` needed and not default?

Question

Several command line tools use the -h or --human-readable option to print file size in a human readable format (i.e., 36G vs 37550836).

Why is this option needed and not the default?
Aren't these tools mainly for output to humans?

score 77 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 14 '11 at 01:34

77

Because they didn't exist originally, and the default behavior is backwards compatible. Also, because they don't exist on all unix variants, and the default behavior is compatible with other unix variants.
For many tools, because they are intended to be parseable by other tools. This is rarely the case for ls, but parsing the output of du or df is relatively common. (Mind, for df, you should use df -P when parsing.)
Because some humans prefer the 37550836 format, because when you see a bunch of such numbers, their relative size is visually clear (number of digits).

answered Nov 14 '11 at 01:34

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

829,060

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Especially 3) when I pipe the output straight through into sort -n because I'm less interested in quickly seeing the rough size of each directory and more in which subdirectory is taking up disproportionally too much space... – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI Nov 14 '11 at 08:41
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@Shadur Ah but sort takes a -h too! – quodlibetor Nov 14 '11 at 19:52
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I think 2 (e.g. for scripting) is the major reason. – sml Nov 16 '11 at 01:27
@quodlibetor What OS/distro? kubuntu lucid sort does not accept -h and I can see no equivalent. – Joe Nov 18 '11 at 23:03
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@user23861 sort -h was introduced in GNU coreutils 7.5. Lucid has 7.4, so on Ubuntu you need at least maverick. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Nov 19 '11 at 02:30

Thor · Answer 2 · 2012-04-20T10:50:39.160

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Note that if you set BLOCKSIZE=human-readable in your environment, this will be the default, at least for the commands from GNU coreutils, i.e. if you're using bash put:

export BLOCKSIZE=human-readable

in your $HOME/.bashrc file.

edited Apr 20 '12 at 10:50

answered Apr 13 '12 at 01:03

Thor

17,182

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Looks like BLOCKSIZE=h might be sufficient. But great tip! – Mikel Apr 13 '12 at 01:38
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The docs suggest BLOCK_SIZE=human-readable. Also didn't know about support for thousands separators until I read that. – Mikel Apr 13 '12 at 05:38
Doesn't seem to work on OSX – James Lin Aug 29 '19 at 05:07
@jameslin: this might be a GNU coreutils specific variable. You could create an alias ... – Thor Aug 31 '19 at 17:53

user unknown · Answer 3 · 2012-05-05T10:41:20.237

Beside what Gilles said:

When these tools where invented hdd was very small, compared with today. You didn't need help to read a number like 400000.

And if you don't like it, use the alias system. In your home directory,

edit ~/.bashrc

and insert, for example:

alias df='df -h'
alias du='du -h'

Note that in contrast to many other languages, you aren't allowed to have a blank before or behind the assignment operator (equal sign).

Why is `--human-readable` needed and not default?

3 Answers3