Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Finding the ten largest size files from a given directory

Combine the du and sort commands to find large files that should be deleted or moved:

    $ du -ak SOURCE_DIR | sort -nrk 1 | head

The -a option makes du display the size of all the files and directories in the SOURCE_DIR. The first column of the output is the size. The -k option causes it to be displayed in kilobytes. The second column contains the file or folder name.

The -n option to sort performs a numerical sort. The -1 option specifies column 1 and the -r option reverses the sort order. The head command extracts the first ten lines from the output:

    $ du -ak /home/slynux | sort -nrk 1 | head -n 4
    50220 /home/slynux
    43296 /home/slynux/.mozilla
 43284 /home/slynux/.mozilla/firefox ...