Sorting files according to size recursively

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/88065/sorting-files-according-to-size-recursively

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You can also do this with just du. Just to be on the safe side I'm using this version of du: $ du --version du (GNU coreutils) 8.5 The approach: $ du -ah ..DIR.. | grep -v "/$" | sort -rh Breakdown of approach The command du -ah DIR will produce a list of all the files and directories in a given directory DIR. The -h will produce human readable sizes which I prefer. If you don't want them then drop that switch. I'm using the head -6 just to limit the amount of output! $ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | head -6 4.4M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/W820_W1020_WirelessFrames_exUG_GLB_en.pdf 624K /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/easyshare_w820.pdf 4.9M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/W820_W1020WirelessFrameExUG_GLB_en.pdf 9.8M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame 8.0K /home/saml/Downloads/bugs.xls 604K /home/saml/Downloads/netgear_gs724t/GS7xxT_HIG_5Jan10.pdf Easy enough to sort it smallest to biggest: $ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | sort -h | head -6 0 /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/monitoring/nagios/nagios-check_sip-1.3/usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_ldaps 0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/0/index/write.lock 0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/0/translog/translog-1365292480753 0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/1/index/write.lock 0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/1/translog/translog-1365292480946 0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/2/index/write.lock Reverse it, biggest to smallest: $ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | sort -rh | head -6 10G /home/saml/Downloads/ 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible 2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy Don't show me the directory, just the files: $ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | grep -v "/$" | sort -rh | head -6 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible 2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy 835M /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/cad_cam_cae/salome/Salome-V6_5_0-LGPL-x86_64.run If you just want the list of smallest to biggest, but the top 6 offending files you can reverse the sort switch, drop (-r), and use tail -6 instead of the head -6. $ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | grep -v "/$" | sort -h | tail -6 835M /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/cad_cam_cae/salome/Salome-V6_5_0-LGPL-x86_64.run 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy 1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip 2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible 3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books

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