I am currently using Linux-Ubuntu and I want to know if there is a way to do this in the command line : Suppose I have a directory and I want to find the biggest file (in size) inside this directory (eventually in its sub directories). I know I have to use find command with -exec option or with xargs command in addition to sort command but I do not know how. How can I do this ?

CodePudding user response：

You right find/exec/sort/xargs could be usefull for this kind of use case. One solution is this :

find . -type f -printf '%s\t%f\n'|sort -n

Let me explain how :

1. Extract list of file concerns (just file with option -type f):

   find . -type f

2. Print the size and the name of file:

   -printf '%s\t%f\n'

3. Sort by size (with -n option for numeric)

   sort -n