How do I determine the total size of a directory (folder) from the command line?
The command du
"summarizes disk usage of each FILE, recursively for directories," e.g.,
du -hs /path/to/directory
-h
is to get the numbers "human readable", e.g. get140M
instead of143260
(size in KBytes)-s
is for summary (otherwise you'll get not only the size of the folder but also for everything in the folder separately)
As you're using -h
you can sort the human readable values using
du -h | sort -h
The -h
flag on sort
will consider "Human Readable" size values.
If want to avoid recursively listing all files and directories, you can supply the --max-depth
parameter to limit how many items are displayed. Most commonly, --max-depth=1
du -h --max-depth=1 /path/to/directory
Recently I found a great, ncurses based interactive tool, that quickly gives you an overview about directory sizes. Searched for that kind of tool for years.
- quickly drilldown through file hierarchy
- you can delete e.g. huge temporary files from inside the tool
- extremely fast
Think of it as baobab for the command line:
apt-get install ncdu
This finds the size recursively and puts it next to each folder name, along with total size at the bottom, all in the human format
du -hsc *