Using awk to grab first number series
 

Hello, just wondering if this can be done as I'd like to use it in a script.

I want to take this:
And just keep the file sizes at the very beginning, no spaces, no letters, nothing after the first series of numbers. Then I want to output those to a file to be added together later. I can handle the addition part, but awk confuses me :(

If it has any bearing, the endgame here is to create a script that will count files and file sizes, add them together on a daily basis to come up with a total. We have a NAS for computer backups and I would like to be able to look at one line of text and see how much data and file count we've backed up from today.

If you want a total number for a specific directory like /etc...
I would also suggest that you use rsync to do your backup and you can get a summary from it along with any problems it encountered during the operation...

You could also use cut to grab just the numbers...

But totaling that up is going to yield a lie because of the way du displays data.