[Wlug] inconsistent results with du and multiple arguments

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 18 June 2008, Brett Russ wrote:
> Can anyone explain why du (which advertises the ability to evaluate N
> file/dir arguments) seems to only be accurate for the first provided
> argument?  See the following:
>
> brett at spider:/> sudo du -smxc tmp
> 60      tmp
> 60      total
> brett at spider:/> sudo du -smxc tmp bin
> 60      tmp
> 1       bin
> 60      total
> brett at spider:/> sudo du -smxc bin
> 9       bin
> 9       total
> brett at spider:/> sudo du -smxc bin tmp
> 9       bin
> 1       tmp
> 9       total

this has come up on the gnu coreutils list in the past iirc (so try searching 
their mail archives).  i think it was one part bug and one part unexpected 
for the user.  make sure you're using coreutils-6.11.  once you have that, i 
think the way symlinks are counted may not be as you expect.
-mike
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