Suppose I have the following files in the directory "example" on a system and want to add the size of each file to obtain a total size for the files in the directory:
$ ls -l example total 1928 -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135319 Mar 28 16:31 file1.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 192725 Mar 28 16:31 file2.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 218882 Mar 28 16:31 file3.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 20793 Mar 28 16:31 file4.png -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 67526 Mar 28 16:31 file5.png -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135085 Mar 28 16:31 file6.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 196391 Mar 28 16:31 file7.png -rw-r--r-- 1 jasmith1 1286109195 4065 Mar 28 16:31 index.html
One way to obtain the sum of all the file sizes is to use the AWK utility. Since the file sizes are listed in column 5, I can use the following command, which shows me that the file sizes add up to a total of 970,786 bytes:
$ ls -l example | awk '{sum +=$5} END {print sum}'
970786If you wish to include the size of any hidden files in the
calculation, you will need to use ls -al. For the above
example, on an OS X system, there will be a .DS_Store file
in the directory (the period at the beginning of the file name makes it
a "hidden" file, i.e., one that doesn't show up if you issue the command
ls without the -a option.
$ ls -al example total 1944 drwxr-xr-x 11 jasmith1 1286109195 374 Mar 28 18:16 . drwxr-xr-x 72 jasmith1 1286109195 2448 Mar 28 20:48 .. -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 6148 Mar 28 16:49 .DS_Store -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135319 Mar 28 16:31 file1.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 192725 Mar 28 16:31 file2.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 218882 Mar 28 16:31 file3.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 20793 Mar 28 16:31 file4.png -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 67526 Mar 28 16:31 file5.png -rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135085 Mar 28 16:31 file6.png -rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 196391 Mar 28 16:31 file7.png -rw-r--r-- 1 jasmith1 1286109195 4065 Mar 28 16:31 index.html $
The ls -al option also lists the "dot", i.e. ".", which
represents a link to the current directory and "dot dot" entry, i.e., "..",
which represents a link to the parent directory.
So, if you use ls -al, you will get a slightly larger number
than you would when using ls -l.
$ ls -al example | awk '{sum +=$5} END {print sum}'
979756If you want to include the size of hidden files, but exclude the
size for the "dot" and "dot dot" entries, you can pipe the output of
ls through
grep, and use the -v option for grep to exclude any
line that ends with a period, prior to piping the directory entries into
awk as shown below. The
backslash
before the period takes away the meaning of that character for the shell,
so it will be processed as the character "." by grep, i.e., the
backslash is an escape character. The
dollar sign, "$", represents the end of the line for grep, so
.$ instructs grep, when the -v option is used,
to exclude any lines ending with a period.
$ ls -al example | grep -v "\.$"
total 1944
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 6148 Mar 28 16:49 .DS_Store
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135319 Mar 28 16:31 file1.png
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 192725 Mar 28 16:31 file2.png
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 218882 Mar 28 16:31 file3.png
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 20793 Mar 28 16:31 file4.png
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 67526 Mar 28 16:31 file5.png
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jasmith1 1286109195 135085 Mar 28 16:31 file6.png
-rw-r--r--@ 1 jasmith1 1286109195 196391 Mar 28 16:31 file7.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 jasmith1 1286109195 4065 Mar 28 16:31 index.html
$ ls -al example | grep -v "\.$" | awk '{sum +=$5} END {print sum}'
976934Another alternative for calculating the total size for all files in a
directory is to use the
Python programming language. You can run Python from a
command line interface (CLI), i.e., a
shell prompt and enter just two commands: import os
and print sum(os.path.getsize(f) for f in os.listdir('.') if
os.path.isfile(f)) at the Python >>> prompt as
shown below:
$ python
Python 2.7.10 (default, Jul 14 2015, 19:46:27)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.0 (clang-600.0.39)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> print sum(os.path.getsize(f) for f in os.listdir('.') if os.path.isfile(f))
976934
>>> exit()
$The current working directory will need to be the directory for which you
wish to perform the calculation when you issue the commands. You will see
that the total file size does include the size of the hidden
.DS_Store file, but not the size of the . (dot)
and .. (dot dot) entries.
In the commands above, os.path.getsize(path), which
returns the size, in bytes, of path is used to determine the size for a
file in the directory.
Alternatively the following code can be placed in a Python program that can be used to determine the total size of files in a directory.
import os, sys # Provide the directory for which you wish to perform the calculation as # an argument on the command line. dirSize = 0 theDir = os.listdir( sys.argv[1] ) for file in theDir: full_path_to_file = sys.argv[1] + "/" + file dirSize = dirSize + os.path.getsize(full_path_to_file) print dirSize
The program, if named
dirsize.py
can be executed by the command python dirsize.py
dirname where dirname is the location and name of
the directory for which you wish to perform the calculation. E.g.:
$ python dirsize.py example 976934 $ python dirsize.py ~/Documents/example 976934
As with the first Python example, the size includes any hidden files, but
not the . (dot) and .. (dot dot) entries, which
aren't files in the directory, but which you will see with ls -al.
If you wish to make the
dirsize.py
program executable, you can change the
permissions on the file with
chmod 755 dirsize.py and put the following line as the first
line in the file to tell the system where to find the Python interpreter:
#/usr/bin/python
I.e., if #!/usr/python has been inserted as the first line of
the file:
$chmod 755 dirsize.py $./dirsize.py example 976934 $
Reference: