Shell Script Question

[qruqs]

Not sure where to put this, since there isn’t a category for script questions. Maybe there should be one?

I’ve been looking for a simple command in Terminal to sum all the file sizes as reported by the ls command. I have yet to find one so I came up with this rather long winded thing.

First some data to work with, very short example (ls -l):

-rw-r--r-- 1 qruqs qruqs   119783380 18 aug 14.42  20240818-002.066
-rw-r--r-- 1 qruqs qruqs      532988 18 aug 14.36  20240818-002.par2
-rw-r--r-- 1 qruqs qruqs     3696180 18 aug 14.36  20240818-002.vol0003+0004.par2
drwxr-xr-x 8 qruqs qruqs       36864 18 aug 11.50 Deep

Then, to get to the thing I want, I have to do the following dance:

$ ls -l | grep "^-" - | cut -d "s" -f 3 | rev | cut -d " " -f 5 | rev | paste -s -d"+" | bc
30057817328

Which is the same number as reported back to me if I go to that directory and select all 81 files, right-click the selection and choose Properties.

That’s nothing short of being ridiculous! There must be a better way.

What is it?

Thanks for any ideas or solutions.

[mithrial]

du -hs

?

[Nachlese]

du -hs

What @mithrial said was a typo, I’m sure.

du stands for disk usage
df stands for disk free
(that’s how I remember it)

man df
man du

[Molski]

I just remember it as doosh! (du -sh)

du -sh file1 file2 dir1 dir2 etc

[beermad]

@Molski

du -sh file1 file2 dir1 dir2 etc

Then add --total and pipe the output into tail -1.

[dmt]

@Nachlese

du -hs

Or if you want a list of the individual file sizes too

du -shc ./* 

[qruqs]

Okay, experimenting a bit I ended up with this:

$ du 2024* ba* -b --total | tail -1
30057817328     total

Much better. 8)

Thanks to all who responded. 8)

See, it isn’t too late to teach an old dog new tricks.

This will go into my tricks directory for future use.