How do I sort by human readable sizes numerically?

bash sort

17,778

Solution 1

Here is a more general approach. Get the output of du folder and du -h folder in two different files.

du folder > file1
du -h folder > file2

The key part is this: concatenate file1 and file2 line by line, with a suitable delimiter.

paste -d '#' file1 file2 > file3

(assuming # does not appear in file1 and file2)

Now sort file3. Note that this will sort based on file1 contents and break ties by file2 contents. Extract the relevant result using cut:

sort -n -k1,7 file3 | cut -d '#' -f 2

Also take a look at man sort for other options.

You may also save this as an alias, for later re-use. To do so, add the following to the bottom of ~/.bashrc:

sorted-du () {
    paste -d '#' <( du "$1" ) <( du -h "$1" ) | sort -n -k1,7 | cut -d '#' -f 2
}

Then, open a new terminal session and execute your new alias:

sorted-du /home

Solution 2

Try something like:

du -h folder | sort -h

Alternatives: -n for Numerical sorting

Note: the -h option of sort only exists in newer versions of Ubuntu.

Solution 3

This answer is valid for 10.04.4LTS and lower versions of Ubuntu.

Unfortunatly the accurate answer which sorts K M G is difficult and complex:

You can alias the entire du command with one that sorts human readable using this

alias duf='du -sk * | sort -n | perl -ne '\''($s,$f)=split(m{\t});for (qw(K M G)) {if($s<1024) {printf("%.1f",$s);print "$_\t$f"; last};$s=$s/1024}'\'

which I found here

http://www.earthinfo.org/linux-disk-usage-sorted-by-size-and-human-readable/

just cd into the folder you would like to know then duf

you could add this duf alias to the end of your /home/user/.profile to make the duf command semi-permenant

results:

user@hostname:~$ duf
0.0K  Documenten
0.0K  Muziek
0.0K  Openbaar
0.0K  Sjablonen
0.0K  Video's
4.0K  backup_db.sql.g
4.0K  examples.desktop
12.0K xml printer ticket
52.0K hardinfo_report.html
152.0K    librxtxSerial.so
2.7M  jpos
4.4M  nxclient_3.5.0-7_amd64.deb
6.4M  nxnode_3.5.0-4_amd64.deb
6.8M  Downloads
7.4M  nxserver_3.5.0-5_amd64.deb
12.4M NetBeansProjects
18.1M mysqlworkbench.deb
28.3M Afbeeldingen
45.8M ergens-20110928-18.sql.gz
60.5M 2012-06-02ergens_archive.tar.gz
65.5M 2012-08-26ergens_archive.tar.gz
65.6M 2012-08-28ergens_archive.tar.gz
65.6M 2012-08-29ergens_archive.tar.gz
65.7M 2012-08-30ergens_archive.tar.gz
113.0M    Bureaublad
306.2M    ergens-20110928-18.sql

Here is why du -sch /var/* | sort -n does not work see the sorting of MKKMMKKMMK

user@hostname:~$ du -sch /var/* |sort -n

0 /var/crash
0 /var/local
0 /var/lock
0 /var/opt
8,0M  /var/backups
12K   /var/games
16K   /var/tmp
17M   /var/log
68M   /var/cache
104K  /var/spool
144K  /var/run
351M  /var/lib
443M  totaal
704K  /var/mail

Solution 4

Command GNU sort has the following option:

-h, --human-numeric-sort compare human readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G).

To have this option on BSD/OSX, you can install sort from coreutils (via brew) and add the bin folder to your PATH into your rc files.

So the command would looks like:

du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20

Solution 5

For recent versions of Ubuntu, use du -h directory | sort -h .

I use a form of this all the time for finding out-of-control files.

View more solutions

17,778

UAdapter

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

UAdapter almost 2 years
for example I have command that shows how much space folder takes
```
du folder | sort -n
```
it works great, however I would like to have human readable form
```
du -h folder
```
however if I do that than I cannot sort it as numeric.

How to join du folder and du -h folder to see output sorted as du folder, but with first column from du -h folder

P.S. this is just an example. this technique might be very useful for me (if its possible)
SirCharlo almost 12 years

I added the last part on how to make your solution into an alias.
Kat Amsterdam almost 12 years

I've reported this to the gnu-core developers with a feature request to improve the du -h function with a sort feature. via [email protected]
Gaurav Bindal almost 12 years

+1, similar one-liner: du folder | sort -n | cut -f 2 | while IFS= read -r -d '' path; do du -sh -- "$path"; done
Gaurav Bindal almost 12 years

there is in version 8.17, so I guess this is the easiest way
Kat Amsterdam almost 12 years

Thanks to steabert for pointing out that the sort command has been improved from sort --version = 8.17 This is the best answer for newer versions of Ubuntu.
Kat Amsterdam almost 12 years

Just tried your 1 liner on a live system. Get a Access Denied error and no du results. Did you try this command on an Ubuntu system first? I changed folder to /home/username
jobin over 10 years

:D I am now used to changing the Ctrl+Alt+t to the format above so much so that I have pasted the required format to my Xpad. :D Feels great to be complimented for such a menial job :)
mx7 over 10 years

Every work you did here worth complement.
muru over 9 years

What's the point of replacing \n with \0? Isn't it a bit too late for that?
muru over 9 years

I know about -0, but it's irrelevant: imgur.com/87w3vfj
Elder Geek about 9 years

Duplicate of answered Nov 17 '11 at 17:13 Allu2
yop83 over 6 years

This seems to work great on non-Linux systems which don't support GNU sort.
Nam G VU about 5 years

This should be the accepted one cause it clean-shoot that resolve the OP with sort -h
Nam G VU about 5 years

Well askubuntu.com/a/80248/22308 simply do this with sort -h