Question

How can I get the disk usage information that is in human readable format -h option but is also sorted correctly.

Right now if i use -h option it does not get sorted correctly i.e G M K are not in ascending order.

Answer 1

I don’t quite understand the question. Why isn’t is not sorted?

edit should ask for the same unit, e.g. always kilobytes with du -k

[jaypal~/Temp]$ du -k ./* | sort -nr
120K    ./GTP
108K    ./scripts
 36K    ./backup
 24K    ./GTP/ParserDump
 20K    ./perl
4.0K    ./outfile
4.0K    ./file1
4.0K    ./file
4.0K    ./colors
4.0K    ./GTP/ParserDump/ParserDump

If you need to output using “human friendly” units, make the conversion after sorting (perhaps using awk).

AWK Script: This is how we can sort the files .. don’t know if we can using the -h option but this is kinda like simulating the -h option. Results are more accurate 😉

[jaypal~/Desktop/Reference]$ du -h ./* | sort -nr
584K    ./scan 1.pdf
544K    ./Personal/Resume
 44K    ./Membership.xlsx
 16M    ./Personal
 16K    ./Membership Transmittal Template.xlsx
 14M    ./Personal/Docs
2.4M    ./Work Docs
1.6M    ./Work Docs/Work
1.5M    ./Personal/Raa

[jaypal~/Desktop/Reference]$ du -k ./* | sort -nr | awk '{split("KB,MB,GB",size,",");}{x = 1;while ($1 >= 1024) {$1 = $1 / 1024;x = x + 1} $1 = sprintf("%-4.2f%s", $1, size[x]); print $0;}'
15.92MB ./Personal
13.82MB ./Personal/Docs
2.35MB ./Work Docs
1.59MB ./Work Docs/Work
1.46MB ./Personal/Raa
584.00KB ./scan 1.pdf
544.00KB ./Personal/Resume
44.00KB ./Membership.xlsx
16.00KB ./Membership Transmittal Template.xlsx