Is there a quick/easy command that a shell script can use to find the total size of the files in a directory?

play with the various options available to du (disk usage) and see if it fills your requirements.

ciao!

Try .....filelight.... excellent visual presentation and in depth detail of file sizes. Also shows percentages. Invaluable.

I always install it, and have done for years.

Cheers. John.

From the console I use:



for example, if I was in /home/username at the time, I would see the total size for Documents, Downloads, Music, etc, etc. The -sh for du command gives summary and human readable format of directory sizes from the directory listing provided by the command ls. The single angled quote is important.

Ah yes the famous "ducks" command I read long ago in a book:

Here's a bash script I either wrote or picked up somewhere a long time ago that will give the directory size in bytes of the current directory: