On 28/11/15 23:02, Bernhard Voelker wrote: > On 11/28/2015 09:45 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote: >> On 11/28/2015 09:01 PM, Dan Jacobson wrote: >>> On both the head and tail man pages, >>> can you kindly not use "K"? >>> >>> -c, --bytes=K >>> output the last K bytes; or use -c +K to output bytes >>> starting >>> with the Kth of each file >>> >>> K bytes sounds like kilobytes. >>> >>> Yes if one reads carefully it doesn't. >>> >>> But instead if you used X, then one needn't read carefully and could >>> still read the page! >>> >>> Or how about B? B bytes. Sounds even better than X. >>> >>> Anyway it (K) appears several places on both man pages. >> >> Thanks. >> Another good spot. >> I'd rather use 'N' as many users would more likely see this as >> 'N'umeric argument. The following does that ... plus also switching >> 2 other placeholders to avoid overlapping with the explanation regarding >> the suffixes K, M, G, T, etc. > > oops, Eric applied the opposite patch 6 years ago: > http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=v7.4-18-gc433334 > > The archives (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/) start 2010, > so does anyone remember why K would be less ambigous than N?
The mailing list split around then: I remember having slight reservations about K too. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-05/msg00279.html Nothing much better comes to mind. cheers, Pádraig
