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# 1  
Old 02-19-2010
Java Question on directory size
Hi All,

Please clarify me on the below:

/home/arun>ls -l
drwxrwxrwx 2 arun system 1024 Oct 06 2009 - arun_req

/home/arun>cd arun_req
/home/arun/arun_req>ls -l
-rw-rw--w- 1 arun system 570 Oct 06 2009 paramfile1
-rw-rw--w- 1 arun system 570 Oct 06 2009 paramfile2

/home/arun/arun_req>rm paramfile1
/home/arun/arun_req>cd ..
/home/arun>ls -l
/home/arun>
drwxrwxrwx 2 arun system 1024 Oct 06 2009 - arun_req

i noticed that the directory size is not reduced even after the file inside the directory got deleted. can you please explain me...

Thanks.

# 2  
Old 02-19-2010
are you sure about the deleting of the file ????
# 3  
Old 02-19-2010
Error
1024 is *not* the disk size - that is easy to verify by creating a large file in a directory:

Code:
jonas merzky /tmp : mkdir test
jonas merzky /tmp : ls -ld test
drwxr-xr-x  2 user group  68 Feb 19 09:36 test/
jonas merzky /tmp : du -sh test
  0B	test

jonas merzky /tmp : touch test/null
jonas merzky /tmp : ls -ld test
drwxr-xr-x  3 user group  102 Feb 19 09:37 test/
jonas merzky /tmp : du -sh test
  0B	test

jonas merzky /tmp : dd if=/dev/random of=test/data count=1024000
jonas merzky /tmp : ls -ld test
drwxr-xr-x  4 user group 136 Feb 19 09:37 test/
jonas merzky /tmp : du -sh test
500M	test

You'll see that the 'size' reported by ls is changing only slightly: this specifies the space the directory metadata is occupying in the file system, such like the inodes needed to specify the directory structure. The above is on a macOS file system, so that looks somewhat different than a Linux/ext2 one which I guess you are using.

To obtain the size of the directory, use 'du' (Disk Usage), as shown above. 'man du' for more command line switches.

Cheers, Andre.
# 4  
Old 02-19-2010
Once allocated directory size displayed by ls will not be reduced even if the contents will be deleted. It will still show the large size it formerly needed as Andre described.

Though a du does not show different output:
Code:
$> ll tmp
total 280
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  278528 2010-02-19 09:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 2010-02-19 09:09 ..
$> ll| grep tmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  278528 2010-02-19 09:34 tmp
$> ls -la tmp
total 280
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  278528 2010-02-19 09:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 2010-02-19 09:09 ..
$> du -sk tmp
276     tmp

This is a Linux box using ext3. It could be that other OS'es and fs'es might behave different. To change that back you'll have to delete and recreate the directory.

JFS2 on AIX resizes the size dynamically after contents are deleted, just as a side note.
# 5  
Old 02-19-2010
Lightbulb
HFS seems to resize, too:

Code:
jonas /tmp : mkdir test
jonas /tmp : l -d test
drwxr-xr-x  2 user group  68 Feb 19 09:58 test/

jonas /tmp : touch test/null
jonas /tmp : l -d test
drwxr-xr-x  3 user group  102 Feb 19 09:58 test/

jonas /tmp : rm test/null 
jonas /tmp : l -d test
drwxr-xr-x  2 user group  68 Feb 19 09:58 test/

I guess ext3 is doing some caching, or lazy garbage collection - but don't know really :-P Interesting though!
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