finding directory sizes using the terminal

Finding directory sizes is important when needing to gather information about filesystems.

Resources: du command

Example with -h for human readability:

du -h /path/to/directory
du -hs . # current directory, summarized

Output:

Note: The -s flag summarizes.

Example with -hs to sort:

du -hs . | sort -h

This will yield information sorted largest -> smallest in a human readable format.

Output:

Another useful trick would be to add exclusions (like .git/):

# greps can be chained together
du -hs . | sort -h | grep -v <exclusion> | grep -v <exclusion> | ...

Output: