[parted-devel] [PATCH] doc: Document IEC unit behavior in the manpage

[Brian C. Lane]

Previously this has only been documented in the info page.
---
 doc/C/parted.8 | 13 +++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/C/parted.8 b/doc/C/parted.8
index 3069c33..171269c 100644
--- a/doc/C/parted.8
+++ b/doc/C/parted.8
@@ -151,6 +151,19 @@ Toggle the state of the disk \fIflag\fP.
 .B version
 Display version information and a copyright message.
 .RE
+.SH UNITS
+\fBparted\fP will compute sensible ranges for the locations you specify when using
+units like "GB", "MB", etc. Use the sector unit "s" or IEC binary units like
+"GiB", "MiB", to specify exact locations.
+
+When you specify start or end values using IEC binary units like "MiB",
+"GiB", "TiB", etc., \fBparted\fP treats those values as exact, and equivalent to
+the same number specified in bytes (i.e., with the "B" suffix), in that it
+provides no helpful range of sloppiness.  Contrast that with a partition
+start request of "4GB", which may actually resolve to some sector up to 500MB
+before or after that point.  Thus, when creating a partition in an exact location
+you should use units of bytes ("B"), sectors ("s"), or IEC binary units like
+"MiB", "GiB", but not "MB", "GB", etc.
 .SH REPORTING BUGS
 Report bugs to <bug-parted at gnu.org>
 .SH SEE ALSO
-- 
2.45.2