This shell script finds and displays the top N heaviest subdirectories in a given directory, where N is provided by the user as a command-line argument.

find_top_heaviest.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Check if the correct number of arguments is provided
if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <directory> <number_of_top_directories>"
    exit 1
fi

directory="$1"
top_count="$2"

# Check if the provided directory exists
if [ ! -d "$directory" ]; then
    echo "Error: Directory '$directory' not found."
    exit 1
fi

# Find and print the top N heaviest subdirectories
top_heaviest_subdirectories=$(du -h -d 1 "$directory" | sort -rh | awk -v n="$top_count" 'NR<=n+1 {print $2}')
echo "Top $top_count heaviest subdirectories in '$directory':"
echo "$top_heaviest_subdirectories"