formatting ls or get one column from ls output

culin · 10-02-2010, 02:56 AM

Hello pals,
i have a problem.. what i need to do is to extract one complete column(file size) from the output of ls -lS but while doing so in some rows i have a single space but in some other rows i have 2 or 3 spaces like some file sizes are different with 30 bytes 400 bytes and some 4000 bytes.. so when i extract the output of ls using | cut -d ' ' -f5 i get the value which has only one space i.e. i get 4000 as output because 400 has 2 spaces seperated and 30 is 3 spaces seperated..
so how to get the file size column from the ls out put ???????

Thanks and regards... .

ghostdog74 · 10-02-2010, 03:01 AM

use the stat command

Code:

 stat -c "%s:%n" *

sem007 · 10-02-2010, 03:09 AM

You can also use awk commnad.

Code:

ls -lS | awk {'print$5'}

Regards,

grail · 10-02-2010, 04:15 AM

And have a look here as to why parsing ls is not such a great idea.

ghostdog74 · 10-02-2010, 04:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sem007

You can also use awk commnad.

Code:

ls -lS | awk {'print$5'}

Regards,

that's also wrong. Did you test your code?

sem007 · 10-02-2010, 05:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghostdog74

that's also wrong. Did you test your code?

Yes i test this and it disply file size columns.

ls -l output

Code:

[root@CentOS-5 dir1]# ls -l
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 29 21:15 1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 29 21:17 2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    8 Oct  2 15:42 abc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9703 Oct  2 15:42 xyz

with awk command

Code:

[root@CentOS-5 dir1]# ls -l | awk {'print$5'}

4096
4096
8
9703

what is wrong with this?

Regards,

ghostdog74 · 10-02-2010, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sem007

what is wrong with this?

the correct way to write is

Code:

ls -l | awk '{print $5}'

sem007 · 10-03-2010, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghostdog74

the correct way to write is

Code:

ls -l | awk '{print $5}'

errr...

Yes you are right. some time small mistake create big problem. i don't know how i made this mistake.

Thanks for pointing.

Regards,

culin · 10-19-2010, 11:22 AM

thanks a lot to all for replies..
@ghostdog74 why is awk {'print$5'} wrong way ? and why is awk '{print $5}' this right way ???

i92guboj · 10-19-2010, 11:45 AM

Just use "stat" as suggested above. It's just silly to parse the ls output when there's a tool that will give you the exact bit of info you are needing.

grail · 10-19-2010, 07:07 PM

Quote:

@ghostdog74 why is awk {'print$5'} wrong way ? and why is awk '{print $5}' this right way ???

Try it on your command line and you will quickly see why.