du: error: the argument '--human-readable' cannot be used multiple times (but works in GNU)

[bwduncan]

Hi,

To reproduce:

du -h -h

or:

alias du='du -h'
du -h

(I have this setup on most machines, but my muscle memory still contains -h...)

Actual output:

error: the argument '--human-readable' cannot be used multiple times

Expected output (for example):

0

GNU coreutils accepts multiple idempotent arguments. uutils should do the same.

I noticed there are a few bugs on this theme, many from 2020/2021, and in fact du itself has many arguments which should be accepted multiple times (e.g. --si, -s, -x, -c etc.) In fact almost all arguments can be safely passed multiple times with no ambiguity.

Do you want a separate bug for each argument, or each tool, or something else?

Thanks!
Bruce

[ajanicij]

I am working on this. I created draft PR 11897. It should solve the issue in repeated use of a command-line argument, for all arguments of du where it made sense.

The solution uses overrides_with to tell clap that repeated argument is accepted.

In addition, as far as I can see, --no-dereference didn't work because of of a typo.

I didn't touch any other command, but I am sure there are many that would have the same issue.

Please let me know if I can open the PR for review.

[ajanicij]

PR 11897 has been merged. It fixes the issue for 'du'. Please open a separate issue for other tools.

[bwduncan]

Amazing! Thanks so much 😄