linux command to get size of files and directories present in a particular folder?

Question

How can I see the size of files and directories in Linux? If use df -m, then it shows the size of all the directory at the top level, but, for the directories and files inside the directory, how do I check the size?

Sandeep · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-29T03:24:45.380

825

Use ls command for files and du command for directories.

Checking File Sizes

ls -l filename   #Displays Size of the specified file
ls -l *          #Displays Size of All the files in the current directory
ls -al *         #Displays Size of All the files including hidden files in the current directory
ls -al dir/      #Displays Size of All the files including hidden files in the 'dir' directory

ls command will not list the actual size of directories(why?). Therefore, we use du for this purpose.

Checking Directory sizes

du -sh directory_name    #Gives you the summarized(-s) size of the directory in human readable(-h) format
du -bsh *                #Gives you the apparent(-b) summarized(-s) size of all the files and directories in the current directory in human readable(-h) format

Including -h option in any of the above commands (for Ex: ls -lh * or du -sh) will give you size in human readable format (kb, mb,gb, ...)

For more information see man ls and man du

edited Dec 29 '19 at 03:24

answered Jul 30 '12 at 10:59

Sandeep

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`ls` won't show you the total size of all contents of a directory. – Maxim Egorushkin Jun 23 '14 at 15:30
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how can I see the size in bytes (Mega, Giga,... ) ? – Francisco Corrales Morales Jul 22 '14 at 19:14
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@FranciscoCorralesMorales ls -lh will show you the size in kb MB GB etc. – Sandeep Aug 05 '15 at 03:25
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note that the `du` command shows the disk usage of the file, wich might be larger than the actual size of the file. You can use `du -d` to get the actual size as `ls` does. More info: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/106278/155224 – Lucas Alonso Apr 19 '17 at 21:04
@mk.. `ls -l` will give u file size including the size of metadata? as it seems to be slightly 4kb bigger for one of file that i tried with – Jun Sep 13 '18 at 20:59
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@Jun No. Thats not metadata. `ls -l` generally shows 1 byte extra than the number of characters you see in the file. This extra character is generally a new line character. You can check it with `od -c ` In unix/Linux, a new line is stored at the end of each line. and the file will end with a new line(an empty file is an exception to this rule). In any case `od -c filename` will give you exact picture of what's in there.. – Sandeep Sep 18 '18 at 00:23
You can type du -d 1 -h | sort -h to get sorted outputs. – KocT9H Nov 21 '19 at 09:51
@LucasAlonso The command is acutally `du -b` (`-d` is for depth) – dCSeven May 20 '20 at 12:10
If your directory has just files and no directories, you can use this command: ```ls -FaGl | awk '{ total += $4; print }; END { print total }'; }``` – Anmol Deep Jan 17 '22 at 11:46
@AnmolDeep if you want to know the total size of all the contents, just do `du -sh \`pwd\`` or do `du -sh ` from one level up. Knowing file sizes is a trivial operation and so we should be able to check them easily. – Sandeep Jan 18 '22 at 02:39
I work on a ubuntu-minimal cluster, here the du command is not available. – Anmol Deep Jan 19 '22 at 04:47
`ls -al *` will only give all files without a `.`, and files with a dot in subdirectorys. ls does not handle *; bash just says that * is all files without a . – jp_ Jul 16 '23 at 18:09
why not `ls -s`? – jp_ Jul 17 '23 at 13:23

Maxim Egorushkin · Answer 2 · 2023-08-03T22:16:21.217

219

There is du command.

Size of an entire directory and/or file (-s), with a total for multiple arguments (-c), in a human-friendly way (-h):

$ du -sch ~/.bashrc /tmp $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR 
8.0K    /home/max/.bashrc
358M    /tmp
80K /run/user/1000
359M    total

I memorised du -sch as a German word dusch (English shower).

--apparent-size command line switch makes it measure apparent sizes (what ls shows) rather than actual disk usage.

edited Aug 03 '23 at 22:16

answered Jul 30 '12 at 10:59

Maxim Egorushkin

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how can I see the size in bytes (Kilo, Mega, Giga,... ) ? – Francisco Corrales Morales Jul 22 '14 at 19:17
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@FranciscoCorralesMorales `-h` flag should do what you ask: _print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)_ – Maxim Egorushkin Jul 22 '14 at 19:56
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I don't think this is right. What `du` does is _Summarize disk usage of the set of FILEs_ , that is if a file is very small (i.e. 2140 bytes) the output of "du" is (in my case) 4KB because that's the size of the cluster – mfloris Jun 20 '16 at 06:45
@mfloris Use `--apparent-size` then. – Maxim Egorushkin Jun 20 '16 at 09:26
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I like `du -hs *` to see the size of all the files, and directories in the current directory. – Jordan Stewart Jan 20 '17 at 01:08

Thor · Answer 3 · 2012-08-30T13:31:40.947

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Use ls -s to list file size, or if you prefer ls -sh for human readable sizes.

For directories use du, and again, du -h for human readable sizes.

edited Aug 30 '12 at 13:31

answered Jul 30 '12 at 11:46

Thor

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A tip is to use; 'du -sh *' to list all the directory sizes. :) – Entalpi Feb 28 '17 at 09:12
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"ls -l -sh" was the one I've been looking for – Am1rFT Aug 02 '20 at 18:23

score 61 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 30 '18 at 09:00

There is also a great ncdu utility - it can show directory size with detailed info about subfolders and files.

Installation

Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install ncdu

Usage

Just type ncdu [path] in the command line. After a few seconds for analyzing the path, you will see something like this:

$ ncdu 1.11 ~ Use the arrow keys to navigate, press ? for help
--- / ---------------------------------------------------------
.  96,1 GiB [##########] /home
.  17,7 GiB [#         ] /usr
.   4,5 GiB [          ] /var
    1,1 GiB [          ] /lib
  732,1 MiB [          ] /opt
. 275,6 MiB [          ] /boot
  198,0 MiB [          ] /storage
. 153,5 MiB [          ] /run
.  16,6 MiB [          ] /etc
   13,5 MiB [          ] /bin
   11,3 MiB [          ] /sbin
.   8,8 MiB [          ] /tmp
.   2,2 MiB [          ] /dev
!  16,0 KiB [          ] /lost+found
    8,0 KiB [          ] /media
    8,0 KiB [          ] /snap
    4,0 KiB [          ] /lib64
e   4,0 KiB [          ] /srv
!   4,0 KiB [          ] /root
e   4,0 KiB [          ] /mnt
e   4,0 KiB [          ] /cdrom
.   0,0   B [          ] /proc
.   0,0   B [          ] /sys
@   0,0   B [          ]  initrd.img.old
@   0,0   B [          ]  initrd.img
@   0,0   B [          ]  vmlinuz.old
@   0,0   B [          ]  vmlinuz

Delete the currently highlighted element with d, exit with CTRL + c

score 57 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 14 '18 at 13:14

57

You can use:

ls -lh

Using this command you'll see the apparent space of the directory and true space of the files and in details the names of the files displayed, besides the size and creation date of each.

edited Jun 14 '18 at 13:14

rooni

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answered Feb 16 '16 at 17:58

Yenier Torres

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`ls -l` will give u file size including the metadata? as it seems to be slightly 4kb bigger for one of file that i tried with – Jun Sep 13 '18 at 20:58

score 33 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 17 '19 at 16:03

Go to the chosen directory and execute:

$ du -d 1 -h

where:

-d 1 is the depth of the directories

-h is the human-readable option

You'll see like that:

0   ./proc
8.5M    ./run
0   ./sys
56M ./etc
12G ./root
33G ./var
23M ./tmp
3.2G    ./usr
154M    ./boot
26G ./home
0   ./media
0   ./mnt
421M    ./opt
0   ./srv
2.6G    ./backups
80G .

score 32 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 29 '17 at 09:24

32

File Size in MB

ls -l --b=M  filename | cut -d " " -f5

File Size in GB

ls -l --b=G  filename | cut -d " " -f5

edited Nov 29 '17 at 09:24

Rishabh Agrahari

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answered Sep 16 '15 at 07:22

Ravichandra

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How to get the two fields as output? – surbhiGoel Jan 30 '19 at 10:02
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I recommend replacing repeating spaces with one with sed before using cut: ls -l filename | sed -E -e 's/ +/ /g' | cut -d " " -f5 – Israel Shainert Feb 02 '22 at 14:53

score 19 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 15 '15 at 18:58

ls -l --block-size=M will give you a long format listing (needed to actually see the file size) and round file sizes up to the nearest MiB.

If you want MB (10^6 bytes) rather than MiB (2^20 bytes) units, use --block-size=MB instead.

If you don't want the M suffix attached to the file size, you can use something like --block-size=1M. Thanks Stéphane Chazelas for suggesting this.

This is described in the man page for ls; man ls and search for SIZE. It allows for units other than MB/MiB as well, and from the looks of it (I didn't try that) arbitrary block sizes as well (so you could see the file size as number of 412-byte blocks, if you want to).

Note that the --block-size parameter is a GNU extension on top of the Open Group's ls, so this may not work if you don't have a GNU userland (which most Linux installations do). The ls from GNU coreutils 8.5 does support --block-size as described above.

Giorgos Myrianthous · Answer 9 · 2020-04-25T18:57:09.910

All you need is -l and --block-size flags

Size of all files and directories under working directory (in MBs)

ls -l --block-size=M

Size of all files and directories under working directory (in GBs)

ls -l --block-size=G

Size of a specific file or directory

ls -l --block-size=M my_file.txt
ls -l --block-size=M my_dir/

ls --help
-l use a long listing format

--block-size=SIZE: scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g., '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of 1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below

SIZE is an integer and optional unit (example: 10M is 10*1024*1024). Units are K, M, G, T, P, E, Z, Y (powers of 1024) or KB, MB, ... (powers of 1000).

Bruno Bronosky · Answer 10 · 2019-03-13T05:19:10.587

If you are using it in a script, use stat.

$ date | tee /tmp/foo
Wed Mar 13 05:36:31 UTC 2019

$ stat -c %s /tmp/foo
29

$ ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-r--r--  1 bruno  wheel  29 Mar 13 05:36 /tmp/foo

That will give you size in bytes. See man stat for more output format options.

The OSX/BSD equivalent is:

$ date | tee /tmp/foo
Wed Mar 13 00:54:16 EDT 2019

$ stat -f %z /tmp/foo
29

$ ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-r--r--  1 bruno  wheel  29 Mar 13 00:54 /tmp/foo

score 11 · Answer 11 · answered Dec 20 '17 at 02:32

11

You can use below command to get list of files in easily human readable format.

ls -lrtsh

answered Dec 20 '17 at 02:32

Amit

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score 8 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 26 '20 at 08:44

You can use ncdu disk usage analyzer here. It displays the size of the files and directories in an ncurses interface. You can navigate to each directory and see the files sizes from the same interface.

To install

$ sudo apt-get install ncdu

To analyze

$ ncdu <directory>

score 7 · Answer 13 · answered May 02 '17 at 11:39

7

I do the following all the time:

$ du -sh backup-lr-May-02-2017-1493723588.tar.gz

NB:

-s, --summarize
            display only a total for each argument
-h, --human-readable
            print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)

answered May 02 '17 at 11:39

Fokwa Best

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score 7 · Answer 14 · edited Feb 20 '19 at 09:58

7

To get the total size of directory or the total size of file use,

du -csh <directory or filename*> | grep total

edited Feb 20 '19 at 09:58

Suraj Rao

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answered Feb 20 '19 at 09:52

suhail ahamed F

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score 7 · Answer 15 · answered Mar 13 '19 at 09:28

Use ls command with -h argument: [root@hots19 etc]# ls -lh
h : for human readable.

Exemple: 
    [root@CIEYY1Z3 etc]# ls -lh
    total 1.4M
    -rw-r--r--.  1 root   root      44M Sep 15  2015 adjtime
    -rw-r--r--.  1 root   root     1.5K Jun  7  2013 aliases
    -rw-r--r--   1 root   root      12K Nov 25  2015 aliases.db
    drwxr-xr-x.  2 root   root     4.0K Jan 11  2018 alternatives
    -rw-------.  1 root   root      541 Jul  8  2014 anacrontab
    -rw-r--r--.  1 root   root      55M Sep 16  2014 asound.conf
    -rw-r--r--.  1 root   root       1G Oct  6  2014 at.deny

score 7 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 21 '19 at 22:17

7

du -sh [file_name]

works perfectly to get size of a particular file.

answered Oct 21 '19 at 22:17

Eyshika

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score 7 · Answer 17 · answered Aug 30 '20 at 05:23

7

I prefer this command ll -sha.

answered Aug 30 '20 at 05:23

darth vader

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Simple and effective. – Shivam Chaudhary May 09 '23 at 18:55

Matteus · Answer 18 · 2018-05-08T08:58:46.887

I'm a Ubuntu 16.04 user myself and I find that the ll command is by far the easiest way to see a directory's contents. I've noticed that not all Linux distributions support this command, but there's probably a workaround/install for each distro out there.

Example:

user@user-XPS-15-9560:/$ ll
total 188
drwxr-xr-x  27 root root  4096 Jan 26 09:13 ./
drwxr-xr-x  27 root root  4096 Jan 26 09:13 ../
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Jan 22 15:13 bin/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 12288 Jan 29 11:35 boot/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep  3 18:14 cdrom/
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root  4440 Feb  5 08:43 dev/
drwxr-xr-x 153 root root 12288 Feb  2 15:17 etc/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  4096 Sep  3 18:15 home/
...

The biggest advantage for me is that it's quick and really intuitive to use.

UPDATE: what I didn't know was that on Ubuntu it's a pre-configured alias. You can easily set it yourself by executing alias ll="ls -la" on the command line, or by adding this entry in your .bashrc config file:

sudo nano ~/.bashrc
...add line described above and save file by pressing Ctrl+X and Y...
source ~/.bashrc

score 4 · Answer 19 · answered Jul 22 '20 at 12:45

4

ls -sh video.mp4 | sed s/video.mp4//g

output, 5.6M

answered Jul 22 '20 at 12:45

Philip

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Could you please provide some context on why this answers the OP's question? For instance, explain what each command does. – António Ribeiro Jul 22 '20 at 14:22
Why the `sed` part? – Robert Jul 22 '20 at 17:26
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I was searching for the command to get exactly the size of the file which user input. And i found this stack useful. But, all commands given here displays the file name with it. So, as per my need i need only the size in output. like just `5.6M` So, i posted this, if anyone in same need may get helpful with this. `ls -sh video.mp4` to list the file size with the filename and i added `sed s/video.mp4//g` to replace the file name with empty. Ex : `sed s/$filename/empty/g` like that. Hope atleast someone will find it helpful who were in same need like mine. – Philip Jul 24 '20 at 05:59

score 2 · Answer 20 · answered May 03 '18 at 09:27

You have to differenciate between file size and disk usage. The main difference between the two comes from the fact that files are "cut into pieces" and stored in blocks.

Modern block size is 4KiB, so files will use disk space multiple of 4KiB, regardless of how small they are.

If you use the command stat you can see both figures side by side.

stat file.c

If you want a more compact view for a directory, you can use ls -ls, which will give you usage in 1KiB units.

ls -ls dir

Also du will give you real disk usage, in 1KiB units, or dutree with the -u flag.

Example: usage of a 1 byte file

$ echo "" > file.c

$ ls -l file.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 nacho nacho 1 Apr 30 20:42 file.c

$ ls -ls file.c
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 nacho nacho 1 Apr 30 20:42 file.c

$ du file.c
4 file.c

$ dutree file.c
[ file.c 1 B ]

$ dutree -u file.c
[ file.c 4.00 KiB ]

$ stat file.c
 File: file.c
 Size: 1 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 2fh/47d Inode: 2185244 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ nacho) Gid: ( 1000/ nacho)
Access: 2018-04-30 20:41:58.002124411 +0200
Modify: 2018-04-30 20:42:24.835458383 +0200
Change: 2018-04-30 20:42:24.835458383 +0200
 Birth: -

In addition, in modern filesystems we can have snapshots, sparse files (files with holes in them) that further complicate the situation.

You can see more details in this article: understanding file size in Linux

score 1 · Answer 21 · answered Mar 17 '17 at 16:32

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you can use ls -sh in linux you can do sort also you need to go to dir where you want to check the size of files

answered Mar 17 '17 at 16:32

Prem S

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sachin_ur · Answer 22 · 2019-01-07T07:28:35.040

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go to specific directory then run below command

# du -sh * 

4.0K    1
4.0K    anadb.sh --> Shell file
4.0K    db.sh/    --> shell file
24K     backup4/  --> Directory
8.0K    backup6/  --> Directory 
1.9G    backup.sql.gz  --> sql file

edited Jan 07 '19 at 07:28

answered Jan 07 '19 at 07:23

sachin_ur

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linux command to get size of files and directories present in a particular folder?

22 Answers22

Installation

Usage