bestfit(1)bestfit(1)NAMEbestfit - Optimally choose files to be put on a CD (or other media)
SYNOPSISbestfit [OPTION]... FILE... [-e COMMAND...]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page document describes the bestfit command. Bestfit is a
small program to determine which files that should be put on a CD (or
other media), so that as little space as possible is wasted. It is
very easy to use: you specify files on the command line, and bestfit
prints the names of those that were selected. Alternatively, bestfit
can execute a command for each selected file (e.g. to move them to a
different directory).
This problem is also known as the 0-1 knapsack problem. The algorithm
implemented by bestfit solves instances of it optimally in theta(n*W)
time, where n is number of files to choose between and W the amount of
free space. This may sound bad but since W is number of blocks and not
bytes, this algorithm is not that inefficient. Try it yourself and see.
Due to the nature of this algorithm, bestfit uses a lot of memory -
approximately 1.5M per file specified on command line. As long as you
have enough swap space, this is usually not a problem since bestfit
doesn't use all at the same time.
Bestfit does (at this time) not use any external program such as
mkisofs or mkhybrid to calculate the size of files. Instead the file
and directory sizes and rounded up towards the nearest 2048-byte multi‐
ple and added together. (2048 bytes is the block size on ISO images.)
Bestfit can not account for all oddities with ISO images (for instance,
there are multiple path tables, padding, etc which is not easy to cal‐
culate), therefore exact results can not always be produced. Bestfit
may waste more space than necessary, or even tell you that files that
won't fit actually fits. (I consider the latter to be a bug though. If
you encounter it, please mail me.) In other words, manually selecting
files and checking that they fit using mkisofs may in some cases give
you better results than using bestfit.
OPTIONS
These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is
included below.
-8, --80min
Space is that of an empty 80 min CD. This is the default.
-7, --74min
Space is that of an empty 74 min CD.
-d, --dirs-only
Ignore all non-directory arguments. (This is useful when includ‐
ing files using wildcard/glob patterns.)
-s, --space=BLOCKS
The maximum amount of space allowed to use, in blocks.
-r, --reserve=BLOCKS
The number of blocks to reserve (usually 200 by default). This
value is simple substracted from the space value before the
algorithm is started.
-e, --execute COMMAND...
Execute a command for each selected file, instead of printing
the name on screen. All following arguments after --execute (or
-e) are taken to be arguments to the command to execute for each
selected file. The string `{}' is replaced by the current file
name being processed, and can be used multiple times.
If --invert is used as well as --execute, the command is exe‐
cuted for files that weren't selected instead.
-i, --invert
Print names of those files that weren't selected (i.e. did not
fitting) instead.
-v, --verbose
Explain what is being done.
-q, --quiet
Output no diagnostic/information messages. (Error messages are
still printed.)
-h, --help
Show summary of options.
-v, --version
Output version information and exit.
EXAMPLES
Assume we want burn the following directories on a CD:
/store/dir1 40M
/store/dir2 67M
/store/dir3 38M
/store/dir4 112M
/store/dir5 130M
/store/dir6 82M
/store/dir7 240M
/store/dir8 56M
/store/dir9 94M
These files won't fit on an 80 min CD so we need to burn them on two.
We can have bestfit determine which files to burn on the first CD:
$ bestfit /store/dir*
/store/dir2
/store/dir4
/store/dir5
/store/dir7
/store/dir8
/store/dir9
used 357888 of 439808 blocks (699.0M of 859.0M)
wasted 1912 of 359800 blocks (3.7M of 702.7M)
Now maybe we want to move these files to another directory. bestfit can
do this too:
$ bestfit /store/dir* -e mv -i {} /store/to-burn/
used 357888 of 439808 blocks (699.0M of 859.0M)
wasted 1912 of 359800 blocks (3.7M of 702.7M)
$ ls /store/to-burn/foo
/store/dir2
/store/dir4
/store/dir5
/store/dir7
/store/dir8
/store/dir9
The -i option was added to make move interactive, so that we won't
overwrite files by mistake. Note that we don't need to terminate best‐
fit's options using --, because -e stops bestfit from reading further
options.
AUTHORbestfit was written by Oskar Liljeblad <oskar@osk.mine.nu>.
April 23, 2001 bestfit(1)
