List files over a specific size in current directory and all subdirectories

Question

How can I display all files greater than 10k bytes in my current directory and it's subdirectories.

Tried ls -size +10k but that didn't work.

Solution 1

find . -size +10k -exec ls -lh {} \+

the first part of this is identical to @sputnicks answer, and sucesffully finds all files in the directory over 10k (don't confuse k with K), my addition, the second part then executes ls -lh or ls that lists(-l) the files by human readable size(-h). negate the h if you prefer. of course the {} is the file itself, and the \+ is simply an alternative to \;

which in practice \; would repeat or:

ls -l found.file; ls -l found.file.2; ls -l found.file.3

where \+ display it as one statement or:

ls -l found.file found.file.2 found.file.3

more on \; vs + with find

Additionaly, you may want the listing ordered by size. Which is relatively easy to accomplish. I would at the -s option to ls, so ls -ls and then pipe it to sort -n to sort numerically

which would become:

find . -size +10k -exec ls -ls {} \+ | sort -n

or in reverse order add an -r :

find . -size +10k -exec ls -ls {} \+ | sort -nr

finally, your title says find biggest file in directory. You can do that by then piping the code to tail

find . -size +10k -exec ls -ls {} \+ | sort -n | tail -1 would find you the largest file in the directory and its sub directories.

note you could also sort files by size by using -S, and negate the need for sort. but to find the largest file you would need to use head so

find . -size +10k -exec ls -lS {} \+ | head -1

the benefit of doing it with -S and not sort is one, you don't have to type sort -n and two you can also use -h the human readable size option. which is one of my favorite to use, but is not available with older versisions of ls, for example we have an old centOs 4 server at work that doesn't have -h

Solution 2

Try doing this:

find . -size +10k -ls

And if you want to use the binary ls :

find . -size +10k -exec ls -l {} \;

Solution 3

I realize the assignment is likely long over. For anyone else:

You are overcomplicating.

find . -size +10k

Solution 4

I'll add to @matchew answer (not enough karma points to comment):

find . -size +10k -type f -maxdepth 1 -exec ls -lh {} \; > myLogFile.txt

-type f :specify regular file type

-maxdepth 1 :make sure it only find files in the current directory

Solution 5

You may use ls like that:

ls -lR | egrep -v '^d' | awk '$5>10240{print}'

Explanation:

ls -lR         # list recursivly
egrep -v '^d'  # only print lines which do not start with a 'd'. (files)

only print lines where the fifth column (size) is greater that 10240 bytes:

awk '$5>10240{print}'

View more solutions

Comments

[matchew]

could you please expand on this question, or at least explain why the two solutions that were posted -- and work, are not appropriate to your assignment. (edit: added please)

[doubleDown]

ls doesn't have any options to filter output by size. It does have a --size option (with no arguments) which prints the size of each file in blocks. By the way, -size +10k seems like a syntax that is used with find.

[jww]

Stack Overflow is a site for programming and development questions. This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about programming or development. See What topics can I ask about here in the Help Center. Perhaps Super User or Unix & Linux Stack Exchange would be a better place to ask. Also see Where do I post questions about Dev Ops?

[jww]

How can I find files that are bigger/smaller than x bytes? on Super User.

[eveo]

I want to display them with ls not find. ls -l . -size +10k did not work.

[eveo]

Still didn't work, this is for an assignment. "Your current directory is dir. Display all the files within dir (and it's subdirectories) that are larger than 10k bytes."

[matchew]

i tried this on a directory w/o subdirectories and it worked flawlessly. let me try this on a different directory. h/o -- find is what you are after, btw.

[Gilles Quenot]

I don't get you. What I propose is exactly what you asked.

[matchew]

ok, I tried it on a different directory. this is what you are after. Can you explain why this is most definitely not this?

[matchew]

I agree, sputnick, what could he be after. +1 to you as my answer is a modification of your own. I have never used find with the -ls option before, I often find myself using find with size or mtime though.

[frankc]

The OP has since clearly stated that this is homework and part of the homework is to use ls

[eveo]

It's because in this assignment we're supposed to input a command. If the command is correct, I get taken to the next section of the assignment.

[eveo]

Actually this answer is correct. I forgot we covered the find command in this course so we're allowed to use it. Answer was find . -size +10k. Thank you so much for the detailed answer, I really really appreciate it.

[Gilles Quenot]

Added a ls binary version in my post.

[Dennis Meng]

(fwiw, we call it "reputation", not "karma". This ain't reddit)

[Ereli]

this answer is confusing because find . -size +10k -exec ls -lh {} \+ returns all files not just the ones that are over 10k

[matchew]

@Ereli That is not the case. Using find (GNU findutils) 4.6.0 it functions as intended. Only files > 10k are returned.

[Ereli]

@matchew well, don't upgrade to 4.7.0-git because it doesn't work. on 4.7.0 I see directories, 0 bytes files, symbolic links and files that are clearly smaller than 10k.

[matchew]

@Ereli, Sorry its not working for you. As far as I know this is the proper way to do it. Several other answers below reaffirm this as the solution. might it work with \; and not \+. Could the meaning of \+ be different in newer versions of find? It was a relatively recent addition 5.5 years ago when this question was answered.

[Ereli]

I tried to dig in the find source code to see what was changed between 4.6 and 4.7 but couldn't find a good reason for this change in behavior.

[Ereli]

you can reproduce this by running docker run -i -t ubuntu:bionic sh -c "find . -size +10k -exec ls -lh {} \+"

[matchew]

What shell is sh linked to? I am using bash. does it work when appended with \; instead of \+? Or perhaps just find . -size +10k -ls ?

[tuxErrante]

It is even better when piped with sort like $ find . -size +10M -exec ls -lh {} \; | sort -k 5