ducks: linux command for the 10 largest files in current directory

ducks.sh

du -cks * | sort -rn | head -11

# Usually set this up in my bash profile as an alias:

# alias ducks='du -cks * | sort -rn | head -11'

# Because it is fun to type ducks on the command line. :)

It would be better to use this:

du -sh * | sort -hr | head

This script has helped me so much.

alias ducks='du -cks $(ls -A) | sort -rn | head -n11' will search in hidden directories also. Helpful for large caches.

@georgedorn you're right -- I use this now:

alias ducks='while read -r line;do du -sh "$line";done < <(ls -1A) | sort -rh | head -n11'

Thanks for the improvement

If this is for the current directory, why not du -cks without further arguments? No parsing ls or shell globbing necessary.

@mcguirepr89 this fails on folders with spaces in the name.
@thebouv I'd use du -cksx if there are any symlinks or sshfs mounts into large networked filesystem, like a NAS...

Suddenly wondering why this has got attention when I posted it in 2014. Weird.

@georgedorn Yeah guess it’s just never come up. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I saw it linked on Mastodon.

I saw it linked on Mastodon.

Hah! Neat.

alias 🦆='ls -1A | xargs -d "\n" -I{} du -sb "{}" 2>/dev/null | sort -rn | head -n11 > /tmp/sizes.txt && awk "{sum+=\$1} END {print sum}" /tmp/sizes.txt | numfmt --to=iec --suffix=B > /tmp/total.txt && awk "{print \$1, \$2}" /tmp/sizes.txt | while read -r size name; do size_fmt=$(numfmt --to=iec --suffix=B <<< "$size"); echo -e "$size_fmt\t$name"; done && echo "Total: $(cat /tmp/total.txt)" && rm /tmp/sizes.txt /tmp/total.txt'

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You can cut out the sort if you are willing to accept that you are only checking on files, not recursively into folders:

ls -AlS |head -11

I often want to know most recent files, so -t is useful.

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