Get the size of a file

loopoo · 12-05-2005, 06:20 AM

Hi!

Can anyone tell me how can I get the size of a file?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

T.Hsu · 12-05-2005, 06:25 AM

du -h file

man du

spooon · 12-05-2005, 06:25 AM

Code:

ls -l file

loopoo · 12-05-2005, 06:51 AM

Hi again!

Thanks for your replies.

Unfortunately, "du -h file" doesn't seem to work on my system. I'm on AIX 4.3
In the man file, "-h" option is present, but the error is:

du: Not a recognized flag: h
Usage: du [-a | -s] [-rlkx] [Name ...]

Also, ls -l , or ls -s is not portable....I need to take this info into a variable...not just to see it....

Thanks,
Chris

live_dont_exist · 12-05-2005, 07:14 AM

Hi Loopoo,

I see that du -s is present ..that sh dwork just fine except that you get the output in bytes if Im not mistaken.Ive not done too much shell scripting..bit of a noob there...but logically u shd be able to redirect o/p to a file ..so wat Im saying is:

#touch abc

#vi abc
blah bkadaksfpsa

#cat abc > test

Then use ur scripting skills to read from the file or sed/awk to parse the file.
U shd be okay...bit of a crude explanation but its the best I can give...sorry..

Arvind

loopoo · 12-05-2005, 07:47 AM

Hi live_dont_exist

I tried with du -s.....but I can't split the fields with "cut"..don't know why...
What I need is a command that will take the file as parameter and return its size...doesn't matter if in bytes, kbytes....I just want to check if the file is empty or not...

Thanks a lot,
Chris

live_dont_exist · 12-05-2005, 08:13 AM

Hi Chris,

Heres what u can du...

#vi abcd
4 5 6 7 8 9

#cut -d' ' -f1 abcd > output

The stuff after d is for the space delimiter....you should get only 4 in the output file.

So if you get 0 as the character in the output file you know that the file is empty

keep posting
Arvind

PTrenholme · 12-05-2005, 08:15 AM

Try this:

Code:

$ du -s /tmp/kde-peter | gawk '{print $1};'
44

where,of course, you use your own file name.

And, I, too, got no output from split. Strange.

Oh, if you just want to test for an empty file in a shell (bash) script, try test -s file. See info test for details.

loopoo · 12-05-2005, 08:21 AM

Tanks, PTrenholme .
Thas is just what I asked for.

Thank you all for your help,
Chris

homey · 12-05-2005, 08:28 AM

Have you tried stat?
stat -c %s file.txt