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On the Bash on a Mac, It is possible to do something like

cd # go to home directory ls -d */

to get the name of the folders in the home directory.

And we can use

du -sh Documents

to get the size in human readable form the size of the folder.

I tried something like

ls -d */ | xargs du -sh

but it won't work, due to some directories having the name Tmp Files (two words separated by a space), which made it du -sh Tmp Files.

Can this be modified or is there a simpler way to du -sh all top level folders and perhaps with a grand total?

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  • I didn't know */... it seems it is to expand all directories only Commented Mar 28, 2020 at 11:00

2 Answers 2

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You can avoid the xargs:

du -sc */

Using xargs would only be useful if you have several thousands directories to avoid a "command line too long" error (but then would would not have a full total, only partial totals for each invocation of du by xarg).

Trick for other commands, to avoid the mis-parsing file names by xargs, have them separated by nulls instead of spaces or line feeds:

printf '%s\0' * | xargs -0 du -s

(printf will loop over its arguments and print them with a NUL at the end and xarg will split on the NULs due to its -0 option). This assumes that the printf is a shell built-in (bash), using the binary would have the usual line length limit.

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The grand total would be

du -s .

and the sizes of individual folders (and possible files)

du -s * .*

only the folders

du -s */ .*/
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  • can you perhaps add what it means by */? Is it the same as on Bash and Zsh? Commented Mar 28, 2020 at 10:52
  • ah, du -csh * and du -csh */ works well too, to show a grand total at last Commented Mar 28, 2020 at 10:56

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