Linux:How To Find The Smallest Files/Directories In A Directory

Sometimes, Maybe you have some specific request as a linux admin, it is to find the smallest files or directory in a directory or in the current directory, or you need to know how to find the files  or list all files or directories in a directory and sort by file size. this guide will show you on how to list all smallest files/directories by size.

​Find The Smallest Files In A Directory

Often, if you want to list all files in a directory, you can use “ls” comand with a few options per your specific request. now the below example will show you how to use “ls” command with both “-S” and “-r” options  to list the smallest files in a directory, where, “-r” options will reverse the sorting order of the listing. “-S” option will do sorting operation. Issue the following command to find the smallest files in the current  directory:

ls -lSr

If you just wnat to see the first 10 smallest file, you can use pipe line and follow to “head -n” command.

ls -lSr | head -n 10

output:

[root@osetc var]# ls -lSr | head -n 10

total 64

lrwxrwxrwx.  1 root root   10 Dec 17  2012 mail -> spool/mail

drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Sep 23  2011 yp

drwxrwxrwt.  2 root root 4096 Sep 24 15:38 tmp

drwxr-xr-x.  8 root root 4096 Dec 17  2012 spool

drwxr-xr-x. 10 root root 4096 Jun 27 18:04 run

drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Sep 23  2011 preserve

drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Sep 23  2011 opt

drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root 4096 Sep 23  2011 nis

drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root 4096 Oct 12 03:27 log

Find The Smallest Directories In A Directory

Using “du” command with “-S” options, which will put the size in kilobytes of each directory in the first column of output , you can give the target directory you want to search and pipe the output to sort command with ‘-n‘ option, type:

du -S . | sort -n | head -n 10

Output:

[root@osetcvar]# du -S .  | sort -n | head -n 10

4       .

4       ./cache

4       ./cache/man/cat1

4       ./cache/man/cat2

4       ./cache/man/cat3

4       ./cache/man/cat4

4       ./cache/man/cat5

4       ./cache/man/cat6

4       ./cache/man/cat7

4       ./cache/man/cat8

Done….