How to get largest file in directory in bash?-CodePudding

I have a following question. In variable DIR there is unknown number of files and folders. I would like to get the name and size in bytes of the largest one in following order: name size. For example: file.txt 124.

I tried:

cd $DIR
du  -a * | sort | head -1

But it does not show the size in bytes, and it is in size name format. How can I improve it please?

CodePudding user response：

This should do the trick:

ls -larS | awk -F' {1,}' 'END{print $NF," ",$5}'

LS long listing reverse sort by Size, then Awk prints the last field $NF, and the 5th field, using a single space or multiple single spaces, as the field separator, of the last line, being the largest size (due to reverse sort order above).

Edit:

It was mentioned a space in the file name might cause an issue, my first suggestion, is dont use spaces in filenames, it is just plain wrong, but if you have to:

ls -larS | awk -F' {1,}' 'END{for (i=9; i<=NF; i ) printf $i" "; print " ",$5}'

will handle the space, or two, or three, or how ever many

CodePudding user response：

What about the following pipeline? I'm using GNU findutils and GNU coreutils. If you work on a Mac you might have to install them.

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%s %f\0' \
  | sort -z -k1,1nr \
  | head -zn1 \
  | cut -zd' ' -f2-

Explanation:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%s %f\0'

Find files in the current folder and print them along with their filesize in bytes, zero terminated. Zero terminated because filenames may contain newlines in UNIX.

sort -z -k1,1nr

Sort the listing by the filesize in bytes, column 1, in reverse order (largest first). -z reads input zero terminated.

head -zn1

prints the first item, which is the largest, after the previous sorting. -z reads input zero terminated

cut -zd' ' -f2-

Cut off the filesize, print only the filename. -z reads input zero terminated.

CodePudding user response：

A variation which should produce the exact output requested:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf "%f %s\0" \
  | sort -znr -k2 \
  | head -zn1 \
  | tr "\0" "\n"