Re: [PATCH v3] lib: add size unit t/p/e to memparse

[Hugo Mills]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 07:54:44AM +0200, Brendan Hide wrote:
> On 12/06/14 23:15, Andrew Morton wrote:
> >On Wed, 2 Apr 2014 16:54:37 +0800 Gui Hecheng <guihc.fnst@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>+ *	%K (for kibibytes, or 1024 bytes),
> >>+ *	%M (for mebibytes, or 1048576 bytes),
> >>+ *	%G (for gibibytes, or 1073741824 bytes),
> >>+ *	%T (for tebibytes, or 1099511627776 bytes),
> >>+ *	%P (for pebibytes, or 1125899906842624 bytes),
> >>+ *	%E (for exbibytes, or 1152921504606846976 bytes).
> >I'm afraid I find these names quite idiotic - we all know what the
> >traditional terms mean so why go and muck with it.
> >
> >Also, kibibytes sounds like cat food.
> Hi, Andrew
> 
> While I agree it sounds like cat food, it seemed like a good opportunity to
> fix a minor issue that is otherwise unlikely to be fixed for a very long
> time. Should we feel uncomfortable with the patch, as is, because of
> language/correctness friction? Pedantry included, the patch is correct. ;)

   Last night, I wrote a very grumpy reply to Andrew. I'm glad I
didn't send it, because Brendan has managed to cover at least one of
my points much more politely than I did.

   My other comment is that TB vs TiB is a 10% difference in the
magnitude of the number, and so the accumulated error is now no longer
small enough to be brushed under the carpet as we all did in days
past. By Andrew's thinking, a 4 TB disk is 3.638 TB in size. I'd say a
4 TB disk is 3.638 TiB in size, and I can be precise (±1GB in the
latter case) with both values.

   Hugo.

PS. Let's just not talk about 1.44 "MB" floppy disks.

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