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Accepted
Steve Bennett
Asked: 2020-01-17 11:32:24 +0800 CST

Is it possible to get ls to show file size, not allocated size?

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When downloading a large file, there is a big discrepancy beween the actual file size (which I care about) and the allocated (ie, final) size (which I usually don't.)

$ ls -lshk
9962420 -rw-r--r--  1 stevebennett  staff    19G 16 Jan 14:30 parcelsclip.zip_.gstmp

In this case, the file will be 19GB eventually, but right now, it's only 9.96GB, as indicated by the first column.

Is there a way to have that 19G column show the current size (9962420), but in human-friendly terms (10GB)?

command-line ls

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Use du -h filename instead of ls.

    "du" stands for "disk usage", and although usually used for directories, it also reports for single files the amount of disk space they actually occupy.

    -h makes it report human readable numbers, e.g. "10.0G".

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