Output of du command

Question

I have a folder and it is 16.91GB in size(I checked in Finder).

I tried to check the size by using du command.

So, I tried du -sh ~/folder and I got 16G.

I thought I will get the output in Bytes and convert it. But I don't understand the metric when -h is not given.

du -s ~/folder

Gives 33041320. I thought it is in bytes but I'm wrong. In which format it is in?

How can I get 16.91GB instead of 16G?

Note: I believe the behaviour is same in linux also, so I tagged linux. If it's wrong, let me know or remove the tag please.

Thank you.

Answer 1

1. In which format is 33041320 ?
   33041320 is the number of 512-byte blocks. From man page:

   If the environment variable BLOCKSIZE is set, and the -k option is not specified, the block counts will be displayed in units of that size block. 
   If BLOCKSIZE is not set, and the -k option is not specified, the block counts will be displayed in 512-byte blocks.   
   

2. how do I get 16.91 instead of 16?
   seems that you cannot. The reason why finder reports 16.91 is that finder treats 1000 bytes as 1k. so technically speaking, the figure reported by finder is incorrect. 33041320*512/1000/1000/1000=16.91