Simple fle size question - UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

gus2000 · #4 (**permalink**) 02-05-2008

Code:

# FILE=mybigfile.txt

# ls -l $FILE
-rw-r--r--  1 root    staff     14639794 Aug 22 2006  mybigfile.txt

# awk 'BEGIN{"ls -l " "'$FILE'"|getline;printf "%s %5.2fMiB\n",$NF,$5/2^20}'
mybigfile.txt 13.96MiB

# awk 'BEGIN{"ls -l " "'$FILE'"|getline;printf "%s %5.2fMB\n",$NF,$5/10^6}'
mybigfile.txt 14.64MB

The above should work for any distro, provided that "ls" puts the filesize in column 5.

See Megabyte - Wikipedia for the differences between megabyte (MB) and mebibyte (MiB).