Disambiguate memory units in favor of IEC names about pprof

[rsc]

Please please please don't do that. It's just needlessly pedantic. Just accept that on computers MB means 2^20 and so on.

[ahh]

Not everyone does accept that, and when I read a pprof profile I have no idea which sort of person the author is.

Saying KiB makes it absolutely clear.

[ahh]

@aalexand Also, should I file a separate issue for needing larger units (TiB and PiB) or is that worth dealing with in one fell swoop?

[aalexand]

Please file a separate bug for the larger units.

…

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 8:35 AM, ahh ***@***.***> wrote: @aalexand <https://github.com/aalexand> Also, should I file a separate issue for needing larger units (TiB and PiB) or is that worth dealing with in one fell swoop? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#136 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABctwNHnnuVUShQf4_AlxKKgXQuDjBYDks5r0LW4gaJpZM4NJzhg> .

[aalexand]

I filed this request at ahh@'s ask to discuss it.

In practice there isn't a lot of ambiguity about MB / GB for memory units - assuming powers of 2 are used is a safe bet. E.g. top shows RSS as like "123M", and that expectedly means MiB.

That said, the clarity becomes more important when a profile represents larger amounts of memory as at TB vs. TiB the difference becomes ~10%.

[rauls5382]

How about if we leave the current defaults as-is (as broken as they can pedantically be considered), but we support users specifying IEC units on the command line (eg -unit=GiB or even perhaps even -unit=IEC)?

Would that please/appease/at least not annoy everyone?

[rauls5382]

Closing this due to lack of interest. Reopen if you care about it.