Bug#294206: stat(1) unclear about block size

[Jeroen van Wolffelaar]

Package: coreutils
Version: 5.2.1-2

I'm looking into using stat for determining available diskspace,
however, this proves difficult or badly documented.

$ stat --help
(...)
Valid format sequences for file systems:
  %a   Free blocks available to non-superuser
(...)
  %s   Optimal transfer block size
$

'Optimal transfer block size', I have the suspection that %s IS the
blocksize of the filesystem, which should be used in a number of other
parameters in order to translate number of blocks into number of bytes.

Is that correct?

If so, please document this properly with %s, 'optimal transfer' is a
bit a vague term. If this is untrue, what %-something printf item will
print the actual block size, what is shows when you do a simple stat -f?

--Jeroen

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7
Locale: LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=nl_NL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii  libacl1                     2.2.23-1     Access control list shared library
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-20 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information

-- 
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
address@hidden
http://jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl