Total size of the contents of all the files in a directory

user_90801 0
Viewed 140790

When I use ls or du, I get the amount of disk space each file is occupying.

I need the sum total of all the data in files and subdirectories I would get if I opened each file and counted the bytes. Bonus points if I can get this without opening each file and counting.

shell linux
12 Answers

If you want the 'apparent size' (that is the number of bytes in each file), not size taken up by files on the disk, use the -b or --bytes option (if you got a Linux system with GNU coreutils):

% du -sbh <directory>
user_16260

Use du -sb:

du -sb DIR

Optionally, add the h option for more user-friendly output:

du -sbh DIR
user_447370

Just an alternative:

ls -lAR | grep -v '^d' | awk '{total += $5} END {print "Total:", total}'

grep -v '^d' will exclude the directories.

user_1470210

stat's "%s" format gives you the actual number of bytes in a file.

 find . -type f |
 xargs stat --format=%s |
 awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}'

Feel free to substitute your favourite method for summing numbers.

user_1441700

If you use busybox's "du" in emebedded system, you can not get a exact bytes with du, only Kbytes you can get.

BusyBox v1.4.1 (2007-11-30 20:37:49 EST) multi-call binary

Usage: du [-aHLdclsxhmk] [FILE]...

Summarize disk space used for each FILE and/or directory.
Disk space is printed in units of 1024 bytes.

Options:
        -a      Show sizes of files in addition to directories
        -H      Follow symbolic links that are FILE command line args
        -L      Follow all symbolic links encountered
        -d N    Limit output to directories (and files with -a) of depth < N
        -c      Output a grand total
        -l      Count sizes many times if hard linked
        -s      Display only a total for each argument
        -x      Skip directories on different filesystems
        -h      Print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 243M 2G )
        -m      Print sizes in megabytes
        -k      Print sizes in kilobytes(default)
user_755010

Use:

$ du -ckx <DIR> | grep total | awk '{print $1}'

Where <DIR> is the directory you want to inspect.

The '-c' gives you grand total data which is extracted using the 'grep total' portion of the command, and the count in Kbytes is extracted with the awk command.

The only caveat here is if you have a subdirectory containing the text "total" it will get spit out as well.

user_1539590
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