How can I see the memory occupied by a file and folder and also entire directory from terminal?

Question

I'm having some files and folders in the "My Documents" directory. What are the commands to see the size of a file and directory in a terminal?

l0b0 · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-08T15:18:48.827

28

This will summarise the sizes of the directories:

du -h

PS: Although all computer storage is technically "memory", this term is usually reserved for non-persistent storage like RAM and CPU cache.

edited Jan 08 '14 at 15:18

answered Jan 08 '14 at 15:00

l0b0

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '19 at 11:24

To see the full size (including whole content) of a folder in a directory, use the command

du -hs YOUR_FOLDER_NAME

To see the full size (including whole content) of all folders and files in a directory, use the command

ls | xargs -I fileorfolder du -hs fileorfolder

Avinash Raj · Answer 3 · 2014-01-08T15:48:13.413

5

Try these commands,

cd ~/Documents
ls -shR

edited Jan 08 '14 at 15:48

answered Jan 08 '14 at 14:59

Avinash Raj

1

`ls -sh` for size and better readability.. and switch `-R` if recursive output is needed.. +1 – rusty Jan 08 '14 at 15:29
1

Not completely satisfied. The size of a folder is given, but not of the **total size of the content** in the folder. See also this [answer about the total size of a folder](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1224/how-do-i-determine-the-total-size-of-a-directory-folder-from-the-command-line) – loved.by.Jesus Jul 04 '19 at 11:03

3 Answers3