From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:53126 "EHLO plane.gmane.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932491AbaD2RKp (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Apr 2014 13:10:45 -0400 Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WfBYJ-0003TK-BF for linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org; Tue, 29 Apr 2014 19:10:43 +0200 Received: from ip68-231-22-224.ph.ph.cox.net ([68.231.22.224]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 29 Apr 2014 19:10:43 +0200 Received: from 1i5t5.duncan by ip68-231-22-224.ph.ph.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 29 Apr 2014 19:10:43 +0200 To: linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/14] Enhanced df - followup Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:10:31 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-btrfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: David Sterba posted on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:56:47 +0200 as excerpted: > Changes: > * btrfs filesystem disk_usage - renamed to usage Hopefully this isn't rehashing an old discussion, but... Simpler is good, and getting rid of the _ is good, but... To users familiar with Unix/POSIX/Linux CLI, "usage" (as --usage) is most often seen as a rather less common and generally briefer form of --help, usually with the distinction being that --help may be a screen or more of output, while --usage is much shorter, perhaps a single line. While I had seen it listed in manpages and --help output often enough, once I actually went looking for real examples I had a hard time finding some, but eventually found some in the grub (grub2) command set. $ grub-bios-setup --usage Usage: grub-bios-setup [-afsv?V] [-b FILE] [-c FILE] [-d DIR] [-m FILE] [--allow-floppy] [--boot-image=FILE] [--core-image=FILE] [--directory=DIR] [--force] [--device-map=FILE] [--no-rs- codes] [--skip-fs-probe] [--verbose] [--help] [--usage] [--version] DEVICE (For brevity, just printing the line-count for the following few example grub-* commands, not the full output.) $ grub-bios-setup --help | wc -l 30 $ grub-probe --usage | wc -l 3 $ grub-probe --help | wc -l 23 $ grub-editenv --usage | wc -l 2 $ grub-editenv --help | wc -l 23 While --usage does normally appear with the usual long-option double-dash and the proposal for btrfs does not, I'd still consider a simple "btrfs filesystem usage" confusing at best, expecting it to print out a short help/usage for the "btrfs filesystem" command, either due to not understanding the token and thus printing command usage, or understanding it as a request to print command usage, NOT the actual filesystem usage. OTOH, for CLI veterans anyway, standard old "du" (btrfs fi du) should be as immediately understood as "df". Given that confusion, I'd suggest either simply making it du, or making it "device_usage" but with "du" a documented alias printing exactly the same output, thus giving folks an easy way to avoid the _. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman