Level 1

24 points

need terminal command to list files

i want to find all files of a given kind within a directory, including subdirectories, and list them according to their size. i've looked into the ls and find commands, but i'm totaly new to terminal. could anyone help me?

to be just a bit more specific:
i have a folder containing up to three levels of subfolders, and within these, i got some .fbx files.
i need a list of these, sorted by size

MBP 2.6GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 12, 2009 5:53 PM

25 replies

horne9 Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 13, 2009 12:12 PM in response to mkramer

i tried just that, after doing some man commands.
it wasn't exactly uglier, but the sizes didn't make any sense to me.

there are some interesting terminal tricks to be found around the net.
most of them don't cover pure usability like this.
it would be great if someone could point to more examples that are not only around for being fancy..

anyway, the intuitive way to do this would be: spotlight for filetype, add column for size in resulting listview.
maybe snow leopard.

mkramer

Level 1

16 points

Feb 12, 2009 7:49 PM in response to iBod

du -ha <PATH_HERE> | grep \.fbx | sort -bg

Message was edited by: mkramer

2point5

Level 3

973 points

Feb 12, 2009 6:12 PM in response to horne9

You could try the following:

ls -LSl | grep '.fbx'

Chris

mkramer

Level 1

16 points

Feb 12, 2009 7:19 PM in response to horne9

So, post the output that you do get (always do this if you are asking for help & it doesn't work)

iBod

Level 7

29,351 points

Feb 12, 2009 7:29 PM in response to horne9

4th time's a charm?

ls -RSI <folder/with/the/sub-directories/to/check> | grep '\.fbx' | sort -n -k5

iBod

Level 7

29,351 points

Feb 12, 2009 7:44 PM in response to 2point5

Doh, I'm on Linux here at the moment. As you rightly say Chris, 'I' isn't valid for OS X/UNIX ls. Just drop that and I think it will still be fine.

Cheers!

mkramer

Level 1

16 points

Feb 12, 2009 7:55 PM in response to iBod

Ohh, nice. I see what you did there. Thanks for teaching me a new use of sort.

horne9 Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 13, 2009 4:20 AM in response to mkramer

output:

<my machine's name>:~ horne$ ls SLI /Users/horne/Pictures/3Dmodeller | egrep *.fbx
ls: SLI: No such file or directory

horne9 Author

Level 1

24 points

Feb 13, 2009 5:20 AM in response to mkramer

mkramer:

du -ha <PATH_HERE> | grep \.fbx | sort -bg

this is perfect!
how could you guess this is how i like it?

a lot of kudos to you!

mkramer

Level 1

16 points

Feb 13, 2009 9:54 AM in response to horne9

du -a <path> | grep \.fbx | sort -bg

Will not mis-sort MB and KB files, but gives an uglier readout. (-h flag makes them human-readable)

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need terminal command to list files