The ls command is used to list directory contents under Linux and Unix like operating systems. If no options or operands are given, the contents of the current directory are displayed on the screen. By default entries are sorted alphabetically if none of the -cftuvSUX nor --sort option passed to the ls command.
| Tutorial details | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | Easy (rss) |
| Root privileges | No |
| Requirements | GNU ls/BSD ls |
| Time | 1m |
The default output (sort by alphabetically)
Type the following command:
$ ls
$ ls *.py
$ ls *.avi
Sample outputs:
Fig.01: ls Command Output
Linux force sort by size option
You need to pass the -S or --sort=size option as follows to Linux or Unix command line:
$ ls -S
$ ls -S -l
$ ls --sort=size -l
$ ls --sort=size *.avi
$ ls -S -l *.avi
Sample outputs:
Fig.02: Sort files / folders (directories) by size
$ ls -l -S | sort -k 5 -nOR try (see comments below, thanks!):
$ ls -lSrSample outputs:
Fig.03: Ls Command Sort By Size in Reverse (Lowest First) Order
Sort output and print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
Pass the -h option to the ls command as follows:
$ ls -lSh
$ ls -l -S -h *.avi
$ ls -l -S -h ~/Downloads/*.mp4 | more
Sorting ls command output by file size on Linux
Run the following ls command:
ls -Slh
OR
ls -Slhr
How to exclude directories when all files ordered by size
Try filtering outputs of ls command using grep command:
ls -lS | grep -v '^d'
ls -Slh | grep -v '^d'
ls -Slhr | grep -v '^d'
total 289836 -rw-rw-r--. 1 vivek vivek 295599646 Jun 9 2018 lnxpcs-master.zip -rw-rw-r--. 1 vivek vivek 501221 Dec 27 15:49 top.cvs -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 270466 Jan 30 2018 out -rw-------. 1 vivek vivek 124866 Aug 13 12:38 Receipt Details.pdf -rwxr-xr-x. 1 vivek vivek 47441 Nov 18 2017 speedtest-cli -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 19419 Feb 9 2018 final.txt -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 13654 Jan 13 17:09 updated.txt -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 8247 Aug 14 09:23 nixcraft.conf -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 5083 Jan 8 00:58 wanted.txt -rw-r--r--. 1 vivek vivek 2674 Jan 3 02:47 vpn.config.ovpn -rw-rw-r--. 1 vivek vivek 1539 Jun 8 2018 email-ids.txt |
One can use find command as well along with sort command to just list dir size in sorted order:
find . -type d -ls | sort -n -r
Or just list files and exclude all dirs when sorting:
find . -type f -ls | sort -n -r
1619988315 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 vivek vivek 164 Dec 20 15:24 ./images/password-change 1619988314 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 vivek vivek 84 Nov 7 16:26 ./images/dig-not-found 1619988310 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 vivek vivek 106 Sep 21 00:34 ./pfsense/fw0.nixcraft.lan 1615242013 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 vivek vivek 83 Jun 19 2018 ./hello-web-app/pdf 1615241993 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 vivek vivek 156 Feb 8 2018 ./books/ssh/ssh2\ twp\ 3\ formats\ 2018-02-07 |
Conclusion
This page showed how to list all files ordered by size in Linux or Unix like systems. See ls(1) command man page for more information.
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| Category | List of Unix and Linux commands |
|---|---|
| File Management | cat |
| Firewall | CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04 |
| Network Utilities | dig • host • ip • nmap |
| OpenVPN | CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04 |
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Instead of
$ ls -l -S | sort -k 5 -n
this works also
$ ls -l -S -r
-r = reverse order
Or just do
ll -Sr
:)
ll is alias to ‘ls -l’. Although it it configured on many linux distros, it does not have to be and therefore not guaranteed to work.
Even better is:
$ ls -lrS
Raphael, Roy, and dru,
Thanks for the heads up. The faq has been updated.
what I do is this:
du -xak . | sort -n | tail -100
it finds me the biggest 100 files or directories on the filesystem I’m in
or du -csh * | sort -n | tail -100
incorrectly using lower case s in these examples:
$ ls -s
…
$ ls -s *.avi
ls -lhS in human readable format.Sorted in descending order
Thanks, it worked.
How would I perform a sort on my home directory by the size of the file??
Assuming you have an ls version that supports ‘–group-directories-first’ you can do:
It needs to be a capital S.
not
ls -lSrh
h makes the filesize a bit more readable :D
seriously, fix your “-s” typo or stop being the top hit on google :P
@foo and rest: Sorry about that :( The faq has been updated.
% ls -S
ls: illegal option — S
usage: ls -1RaAdCxmnlhogrtuvVcpFbqisfHLeE@ [files]
That’s more than likely Solaris. However, if you have coreutils installed you can do ‘gls -S’ ;-)
The one thing I find most annoying about Linux “ls” is the fact that it (at least on Ubuntu) it sorts things in alphabetical order, no matter if it’s a dot file, or capitalized, or whatever. This highly offends my BSD-like sensibilities and makes me think linux “ls” belongs to DOS.
Is there a way to make it stop this vile and pernicous behavior? ;)
Don’t have a Linux box right now to test but I think you’re looking for this:
alias lsdot='LC_COLLATE=C ls -alF'lsdot
Cool — I’ll check it out.
i think you may alias it
alias ‘ls=ls -lrt’ and put this instrcutionion into your .profile so that everytime you open a session ls will get replaced by ls -lrt
I also like this one:
*) ls –sort=size -sh
no option for -S in SunOS 5.10 sun4v sparc
$ ls -lSrls: illegal option -- S
neither the below:
$ ls --sort=size -lls: illegal option -- sort=size