Total size of the contents of all the files in a directory [closed]

Answer 1

There are at least three ways to get the "sum total of all the data in files and subdirectories" in bytes that work in both Linux/Unix and Git Bash for Windows, listed below in order from fastest to slowest on average. For your reference, they were executed at the root of a fairly deep file system (docroot in a Magento 2 Enterprise installation comprising 71,158 files in 30,027 directories).

1.

$ time find -type f -printf '%s\n' | awk '{ total += $1 }; END { print total" bytes" }'
748660546 bytes

real    0m0.221s
user    0m0.068s
sys     0m0.160s

2.

$ time echo `find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat --format=%s | awk '{total+=$1} END {print total}'` bytes
748660546 bytes

real    0m0.256s
user    0m0.164s
sys     0m0.196s

3.

$ time echo `find -type f -exec du -bc {} + | grep -P "\ttotal$" | cut -f1 | awk '{ total += $1 }; END { print total }'` bytes
748660546 bytes

real    0m0.553s
user    0m0.308s
sys     0m0.416s

These two also work, but they rely on commands that don't exist on Git Bash for Windows:

1.

$ time echo `find -type f -printf "%s + " | dc -e0 -f- -ep` bytes
748660546 bytes

real    0m0.233s
user    0m0.116s
sys     0m0.176s

2.

$ time echo `find -type f -printf '%s\n' | paste -sd+ | bc` bytes
748660546 bytes

real    0m0.242s
user    0m0.104s
sys     0m0.152s

If you only want the total for the current directory, then add -maxdepth 1 to find.

---

Note that some of the suggested solutions don't return accurate results, so I would stick with the solutions above instead.

$ du -sbh
832M    .

$ ls -lR | grep -v '^d' | awk '{total += $5} END {print "Total:", total}'
Total: 583772525

$ find . -type f | xargs stat --format=%s | awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}'
xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option
4390471

$ ls -l| grep -v '^d'| awk '{total = total + $5} END {print "Total" , total}'
Total 968133

Answer 2

If you want the 'apparent size' (that is the number of bytes in each file), not size taken up by files on the disk, use the -b or --bytes option (if you got a Linux system with GNU coreutils):

% du -sbh <directory>

Answer 3

Use du -sb:

du -sb DIR

Optionally, add the h option for more user-friendly output:

du -sbh DIR

Answer 4

If you use busybox's "du" in emebedded system, you can not get a exact bytes with du, only Kbytes you can get.

BusyBox v1.4.1 (2007-11-30 20:37:49 EST) multi-call binary

Usage: du [-aHLdclsxhmk] [FILE]...

Summarize disk space used for each FILE and/or directory.
Disk space is printed in units of 1024 bytes.

Options:
        -a      Show sizes of files in addition to directories
        -H      Follow symbolic links that are FILE command line args
        -L      Follow all symbolic links encountered
        -d N    Limit output to directories (and files with -a) of depth < N
        -c      Output a grand total
        -l      Count sizes many times if hard linked
        -s      Display only a total for each argument
        -x      Skip directories on different filesystems
        -h      Print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 243M 2G )
        -m      Print sizes in megabytes
        -k      Print sizes in kilobytes(default)

Answer 5

When a folder is created, many Linux filesystems allocate 4096 bytes to store some metadata about the directory itself. This space is increased by a multiple of 4096 bytes as the directory grows.

du command (with or without -b option) take in count this space, as you can see typing:

mkdir test && du -b test

you will have a result of 4096 bytes for an empty dir. So, if you put 2 files of 10000 bytes inside the dir, the total amount given by du -sb would be 24096 bytes.

If you read carefully the question, this is not what asked. The questioner asked:

the sum total of all the data in files and subdirectories I would get if I opened each file and counted the bytes

that in the example above should be 20000 bytes, not 24096.

So, the correct answer IMHO could be a blend of Nelson answer and hlovdal suggestion to handle filenames containing spaces:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat --format=%s | awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}'

Answer 6

Just an alternative:

ls -lAR | grep -v '^d' | awk '{total += $5} END {print "Total:", total}'

grep -v '^d' will exclude the directories.