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user806346
Asked: 2018-06-15 06:36:25 +0800 CST

Listing files in a directory including contents of subfolders with sorting

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I'm looking to list the entire contents of a directory, including the contents of subfolders but sorted by filesize. Thus far I've managed to get as far as listing and sorting whilst still being recursive with ls -lhSR(the h is nice to have but definitely not essential for me, as long as I can get file sizes). I am likely overlooking something obvious, or asking the impossible, but any advice here would be greatly appreciated.

command-line directory file-sorting

5 Answers

  1. You can use find:

    find . -type f -printf "%s %P\n" | sort -n

    Optional: To convert byte values to human-readable format, add this:

    | numfmt --to=iec-i --field=1

    Explanation:

     find in current directory (.) all files (-type f) 

 -printf: suppress normal output and print the following:
     %s - size in bytes
     %P - path to file
     \n - new line

 | sort -n: sort the result (-n = numeric)
    • 15

  2. Since you didn't specify a particular shell, here's an alternative using zsh's glob qualifiers with

    setopt extendedglob

    for the recursion. Then for example:

    1. recursively list plain files:

      printf '%s\n' **/*(.)

    2. recursively list plain files, ordered by increasing Length (i.e. size): 

      printf '%s\n' **/*(.oL)

    3. recursively list plain files, Ordered by decreasing size: 

      printf '%s\n' **/*(.OL)

    4. recursively list plain files, ordered by decreasing size, and select the top 3 results: 

      printf '%s\n' **/*(.OL[1,3])

    If you want the file sizes as well, then you could use

    du -hb **/*(.OL[1,3])
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  3. With the globstar shell option set you can use shell globbing:

    shopt -s globstar         # don’t match hidden files
shopt -s globstar dotglob # match hidden files
stat -c"%s %n" **/* | sort -n

    If you try that with too many files, you‘ll get an “Argument list too long” error. To work around that, you can use printf and xargs:

    printf "%s\0" **/* | xargs -0 stat -c"%s %n" | sort -n

    I just realized this prints the directories (with a size of 4096 bytes) as well – if you don’t want that, use this instead:

    stat -c"%A %s %n" **/* | sed '/^d/d;s/\S* //' | sort -n
printf "%s\0" **/* | xargs -0 stat -c"%A %s %n" | sed '/^d/d;s/\S* //' | sort -n

    Example run

    $ tree
.
├── edits.png
├── makescript
├── new
│   └── edits.png
└── test
    └── 1.png

2 directories, 4 files
$ stat -c"%s %n" **/* | sort -n
0 test/1.png
43 makescript
2160 edits.png
2160 new/edits.png
4096 new
4096 test
$ stat -c"%A %s %n" **/* | sed '/^d/d;s/\S* //' | sort -n
0 test/1.png
43 makescript
2160 edits.png
2160 new/edits.png
    • 4

  4. If you don't have zsh, you can still use du + sort:

    1. Human-readable sizes, including cumulative sizes of directories:

      du --apparent-size -ah0 . | sort -zh | xargs -0L1

    2. Only files (using find):

      find . -type f -print0 |
  du --files0-from=- --apparent-size -ah0 |
  sort -zh |
  xargs -0L1

    In both cases, I have opted to use null-terminated lines (-0, -z, -print0 options), to be safe against all valid filenames.

    • 3

  5. For quick interactive use on directory trees that aren't too huge, shopt -s globstar is really nice. A glob can't filter out directories based on type, but if you use it with ls -d then ls will just print the directory name, instead of the contents.

    Assuming your ll alias includes -lh:

      # with  shopt -s globstar   in your .bashrc
ll -rSd **/*

    will give you output like this (from my code-golf directory), but with colour highlighting (so it's easier to see the directories). Note that sorting by filesize happened across subdirectories.

    drwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter   70 Jun  8 07:56 casexchg
...
drwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter  342 Mar 13 18:47 parity-party
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter  387 Jul 29  2017 likely.cpp
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter  416 Aug 31  2017 true-binary.asm~
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter  447 Feb 23 20:14 weight-of-zero.asm
...
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 6.4K Jun  1  2017 string-exponential.asm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 6.7K Aug 31  2017 true-binary
-rwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 6.8K Sep 17  2017 dizzy-integer
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 7.5K Jul 24  2017 fibonacci/fibonacci-1G.v3-working-32b-stack-except-output.asm
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 8.4K Jul 25  2017 fibonacci/perf.32bit-pop-114limb.sub-cmc.1G~
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 8.4K Jul 25  2017 fibonacci/perf.32bit-pop-114limb.sub-cmc.1G
-rwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 8.4K May 19 04:29 a.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 8.9K Jul 25  2017 fibonacci/perf.python-xnor-2n
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 9.5K Jul 26  2017 fibonacci/fibonacci-1G-performance.asm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 9.6K Apr 12 23:25 empty-args
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 9.7K Dec 18 17:00 bubblesort.asm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 9.9K Feb  6 23:34 parity-party/a.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 9.9K Jul 25  2017 fibonacci/fibonacci-1G-performance.asm~
...

    You could filter out the directories by piping through grep -v '^d'

    You can sometimes use a glob that matches only files and not directories, if your filenames have a pattern. e.g. ll -rSd **/*.jpg, or even **/*.* works if none of your directory names have . in them, and all the files you want do.

    (For people with a DOS background: there's nothing magical about *.* on Unix. It just matches any directory entry that contains a literal dot. But other than executables and sometimes text files, it's common to give extensions to filenames.)

    @dessert points out you would need shopt -s dotglob for it to match all files.

    With GNU find

    If there aren't too many files to fit on one ls command line, find -exec ls {} + will put them all on on command line where ls can sort them.

    find -not -type d -exec ls --color -lrSh {} +

    Using -not -type d instead of -type f avoids ignoring symlinks, named pipes, sockets, device files, and whatever else you have kicking around in your directories.

    With du:

    du -ach | sort -h
....
4.0K    x86-modedetect-polyglot.o
8.0K    ascii-compress-base.asm
8.0K    dizzy-integer
8.0K    stopwatch-rdtsc.asm
8.0K    string-exponential.asm
8.0K    true-binary
12K     a.out
12K     bubblesort.asm
12K     casexchg
12K     empty-args
100K    parity-party
220K    fibonacci
628K    total

    Now directory names are sorted into the list with to sum total of all their contents, but individual files are still included.

    sort -h, aka --human-numeric-sort, sorts numbers with size suffixes like du -h prints. It's perfect for use with du.

    I often use du -sch * | sort -h, or */ to get only directories.

    du -sch **/* | sort -h would give you the above output, if you forget that du has a -a option.

    (I only took the time to look it up because I'm posting an answer. For interactive use, I probably would have just used du -sch **/*.

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