Re: Feature Request: du --dir-with-slash

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:
> Thomas Guettler wrote:
>> Thank you for being interested. I wrote a patch which makes the slash
>> optional:
>>
>> src/du --help:
>>  ...
>>   -z, --dir-with-slash  append a slash to directories.
>
> I don't think it's worth an option TBH.
> How about we do this iff POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is not set?

Hi Pádraig,

I don't like to encourage the use of POSIXLY_CORRECT,
and fear such a change might end up doing that.
Besides, the cost[*]/benefit ratio of adding trailing slashes by
default looks way too high.

[*] in potential portability hassles.
I.e., people could easily come to rely on the GNU df's trailing slashes,
and then inadvertently write non-portable scripts.

I'm very dubious about adding this as an option.
Do you really think an option is warranted for this,
considering you can already get the desired behavior
with a small wrapper, as I demonstrated:

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/12895/focus=12896

By the way, someone's mail server (Thomas', I think) refused mail from my
IP address last time, and I'm not bothering to reroute to accommodate it.