Finding out how much disk space is used in a certain directory

[Ryan Gro]

Hey,

I'm trying to list how much disk space each directory (not mountpoint) uses.
I know about the du command, but is there a way to use that command without propagating all the way down all the directories?
I just want to list the disk usage of the directories in my current directory.

Thanks for your help,
Ryan

[gabbar · Accepted solution]

this should do it.

du -sk /house/rahul/*

[Ryan Gro]

That's perfect thank you very much!

[Kenan Erdey]

Hi,
rather than listing all directories recursively, to find out just top level directories' disk usage in your directory:

#cd /your_directory
#ll | grep ^d | awk '{system("du -sk "$9);}'

Kenan.

[Ryan Gro]

Haha wow I don't understand any of that line but it works just great too. Thanks!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Ryan:

> # ll | grep ^d | awk '{system("du -sk "$9);}'

> I don't understand any of that line but it works just great too.

The ouput of an 'll' is filtered to take only directories --- lines that begin with the letter "d" in the 'll' mode column. The caret (^) anchors the match to the beginning of a line so the match is true or false based only on the first character there.

The 'awk' process then examines the ninth ($9) field of the 'll' output (which is the directory name) and uses that field as the argument to 'du'. To run the 'du', 'awk' spawns a new process using its 'system' function.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

#ll | grep ^d | awk '{system("du -sk "$9);}'
>I don't understand any of that line but it works just great too.

This just lists all of the files in your current directory, then selects lines starting with "d", for directories. Then invokes awk to do "du -sk" on each directory name, which is in field 9.

You can look at the stages in the pipeline:
ll | grep ^d | more

[Ryan Gro]

That makes lots of sense now thanks a lot. I still have a long ways to go understanding unix I guess. I've seen this "awk" command a few places before I just never knew what it did.

[Dennis Handly]

>I still have a long ways to go understanding unix I guess

Here is a thread that has links to documentation about sed, awk and perl.
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=794554

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Ryan:

In addition to the books and references that Dennis pointed you toward, don't forget the excellent, free, manual collection:

http://www.gnu.org/manual/

The 'awk' guide is very good.

Regards!

...JRF...