Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands using du from sorted by
Terminal - Commands using du - 184 results
ls | xargs du -sh
2009-12-10 15:58:05
User: jyro
Functions: du ls xargs
-4
Up
Down
List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -ms * 2>/dev/null |sort -nr|head
2009-11-23 16:06:40
User: yooreck
Functions: du sort
1
Up
Down
List the biggest accessible files/dirs in current directory, sorted
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du | sort -nr | cut -f2- | xargs du -hs
2009-11-20 17:14:40
User: unixmonkey7118
Functions: cut du sort xargs
2
Up
Down
Show sorted list of files with sizes more than 1MB in the current dir

no fancy grep stuff here.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
dh() { du -ch --max-depth=1 "${@-.}"|sort -h }
2009-10-30 15:30:16
User: gibboris
Functions: du sort
4
Up
Down
Sort the size usage of a directory tree by gigabytes, kilobytes, megabytes, then bytes.

Since coreutils 7.6 provides sort -h

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch -n 60 du /var/log/messages
2009-10-27 14:53:41
User: rbossy
Functions: du watch
1
Up
Down
Monitor a file's size
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 | while read pkg; do dpkg -L $pkg | xargs -I'{}' bash -c 'if [ ! -d "{}" ]; then echo "{}"; fi' | tr '\n' '\000' | du -c --files0-from - | tail -1 | sed "s/total/$pkg/"; done
2009-10-12 14:57:54
User: pykler
Functions: bash cut du echo read sed tail tr xargs
Tags: Debian wajig
5
Up
Down
List your largest installed packages.

Calculates the size on disk for each package installed on the filesystem (or removed but not purged). This is missing the

| sort -rn

which would put the biggest packges on top. That was purposely left out as the command is slightly on the slow side

Also you may need to run this as root as some files can only be checked by du if you can read them ;)

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
watch -n60 du /var/log/messages
2009-10-09 18:37:45
User: matrixguy
Functions: du watch
8
Up
Down
Monitor a file's size

use "watch" instead of while-loops in these simple cases

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
while [ 1 ]; do du /var/log/messages;sleep 60; done
2009-10-09 17:22:19
User: savanik
Functions: du
0
Up
Down
Monitor a file's size

Got a file you're generating and you want the size without typing in 'ls -l file' all the time? Use this instead.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find [path] [expression] -exec du -ab {} \; | awk '{total+=$0}END{print total}'
2009-09-24 17:50:26
User: rehanift
Functions: awk du find
3
Up
Down
Sum size of files returned from FIND
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.' -execdir du -0 -s {} + | sort -znr | gawk 'BEGIN{ORS=RS="\0";} {sub($1 "\t", ""); print $0;}' | xargs -0 du -hs
2009-09-11 16:07:39
User: ashawley
Functions: du find gawk sort xargs
Tags: sort find du xargs GNU/Linux
1
Up
Down
Ultimate current directory usage command

A little bit smaller, faster and should handle files with special characters in the name.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -a --max-depth=1 | sort -n | cut -d/ -f2 | sed '$d' | while read i; do if [ -f $i ]; then du -h "$i"; else echo "$(du -h --max-depth=0 "$i")/"; fi; done
2009-09-03 20:43:43
User: nickwe
Functions: cut du echo read sed sort
Tags: bash sort sed echo du read while cut
3
Up
Down
Ultimate current directory usage command

Based on the MrMerry one, just add some visuals to differentiate files and directories

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d|xargs du -a --max-depth=0|sort -rn|cut -d/ -f2|sed '1d'|while read i;do echo "$(du -h --max-depth=0 "$i")/";done;find . -maxdepth 1 -type f|xargs du -a|sort -rn|cut -d/ -f2|sed '$d'|while read i;do du -h "$i";done
2009-09-03 20:33:21
User: nickwe
Functions: cut du echo find read sed sort xargs
Tags: bash sort sed echo find xargs read while cut
2
Up
Down
Ultimate current directory usage command

Based on the MrMerry one, just add some visuals and sort directory and files

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
O=$IFS;IFS=$'\n'; D=$(for f in *;do [[ -d $f ]] && du -sh "$f";done | sort -gr);F=$(for f in *;do [[ -f $f ]] && du -sh "$f";done | sort -gr);IFS=$O;echo "$D";echo "$F"
2009-09-03 11:39:50
User: Viperlin
Functions: du sort
-3
Up
Down
Ultimate current directory usage command

biggest->small directories, then biggest->smallest files

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -s `find . -maxdepth 1 \! -name '.'` | sort -n | tail
2009-08-28 00:24:11
User: hydhaval
Functions: du sort
-2
Up
Down
find dis1k space
Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo find /var/log/ -mtime -7 -type f | xargs du -ch | tail -n1
2009-08-27 14:18:47
User: alvinx
Functions: du find sudo tail xargs
2
Up
Down
get diskusage of files modified during the last n days

get diskusage of files (in this case logfiles in /var/log) modified during the last n days:

sudo find /var/log/ -mtime -n -type f | xargs du -ch

n -> last modified n*24 hours ago

Numeric arguments can be specified as

+n for greater than n,

-n for less than n,

n for exactly n.

=> so 7*24 hours (about 7 days) is -7

sudo find /var/log/ -mtime -7 -type f | xargs du -ch | tail -n1
Show sample output | Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cat filename | tr '\n' '\0' | du -hsc ?files0-from=-
2009-08-21 18:36:49
User: Diluted
Functions: cat du tr
0
Up
Down
Have a list of directories in a file, ending with newlines and need to run du on it?

du only accepts lines ending with a NUL, which can be a pain to create. This solves that issue.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -sk * |sort -rn |head
2009-08-19 02:31:30
User: realist
Functions: du sort
9
Up
Down
Get the 10 biggest files/folders for the current direcotry
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo du -ks $(ls -d */) | sort -nr | cut -f2 | xargs -d '\n' du -sh 2> /dev/null
2009-08-17 22:21:09
User: Code_Bleu
Functions: cut du ls sort sudo xargs
Tags: disk usage
7
Up
Down
Get the size of all the directories in current directory (Sorted Human Readable)

This allows the output to be sorted from largest to smallest in human readable format.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
while true ; do du -sk testfile ; sleep 10 ; done
2009-08-14 11:39:52
User: Solaris
Functions: du sleep true
-2
Up
Down
Lists the size of certain file in every 10 seconds

This command produces the output of "du -sk testfile" in every 10 seconds. You can change the command to be whatever you want.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -hd 1
2009-08-10 13:11:22
User: Tuirgin
Functions: du
Tags: disk usage osx
3
Up
Down
Get the size of all the directories in current directory

OSX's BSD version of the du command uses the -d argument instead of --max-depth.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du --max-depth=1
2009-08-08 00:46:29
User: Octave
Functions: du
Tags: disk usage
7
Up
Down
Get the size of all the directories in current directory
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo du -sh $(ls -d */) 2> /dev/null
2009-08-07 19:00:09
User: Code_Bleu
Functions: du ls sudo
Tags: disk usage
1
Up
Down
Get the size of all the directories in current directory
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -aB1m|awk '$1 >= 100'
2009-08-01 20:16:33
User: karatatar
Functions: awk du
Tags: Filesystem disk usage size
0
Up
Down
Which files/dirs waste my disk space

Useful for analyzing disk usage. If you prefer GUI try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filelight or http://www.marzocca.net/linux/baobab/

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
echo $( du -sm /var/log/* | cut -f 1 ) | sed 's/ /+/g'
2009-07-31 21:42:53
User: flux
Functions: cut du echo sed
Tags: echo bc
2
Up
Down
cooking a list of numbers for calculation

When you've got a list of numbers each on its row, the ECHO command puts them on a simple line, separated by space. You can then substitute the spaces with an operator. Finally, pipe it to the BC program.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -ms * | sort -nk1
2009-07-08 22:11:50
User: Tekhne
Functions: du sort
Tags: less sort find du human
2
Up
Down
Alternative size (human readable) of files and directories (biggest last)
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate