Hi Bakunin (looks funny with a cap ),

Although I am getting close to 20 years professionally with AIX (and nearly 10+ more while it was not my favorite) - I have never had access to the labs.

Back in 1978 - is when I started with UNIX v6 and v7 on PDP, and "college access to the kernel". The deep stuff I learned back then.

As to things like the meaning of -h - like anyone (or perhaps I am alone) not starting in GNU/Linux, I fell over it. From AIX I was used to df -g, and when coreutils are first in my PATH that does not work. I requested it (support for -g) as a feature - and got turned down "because we have -h". That was the day I learned about "-h" and how it relates to du and ds. Looking at Maddy's question - it seems he is looking for a specific layout - with the letters K, M or G behind the number, rather than as a counter.

Maddy,

Working the way it has been in UNIX for years and years (du -sk goes back to 1978 and earlier perhaps) - is not going to work for you.

If I understand you correctly - what you are asking is not standard in UNIX aka POSIX systems. It is not even standard in Linux, because it is GNU - not Linux - who makes these choices. And GNU stands for GNU Not Unix - which they take seriously. If they feel they have a better idea, then they do it that way. They are "not UNIX/POSIX" and are free to make any change they wish. Fortunately, they also try to be compatible with POSIX behavior most of the time.

POSIX does not have -h - so GNU can define that anyway they wish. And so the following outputs show - if you need/want file system stats as you describe - either you will need to write an awk script (or something compareable) to convert the first number that AIX/POSIX du behavior is providing - OR - install coreutils.

Happy hunting!

Both AIX and COREUTILS versions give the same output for the arguments -k, (-sk to sum directories), -m or -sm.

Note the full path of the command:
AIX

Code:

michael@x071:[/home/michael]/usr/bin/du -sk /tmp/* | sort -n | tail
3520    /tmp/openssh_xxx
4704    /tmp/waitUploaderTmp_7078008.0
4704    /tmp/waitUploaderTmp_7078008.0.tmp
8452    /tmp/ibm.bff
17656   /tmp/891c0bbd
27888   /tmp/93b06705msd
40008   /tmp/aixtools.perl.5.14.4.0.I
41152   /tmp/named.tcpdump
56900   /tmp/rootvg.20140814.bff.bz2
60332   /tmp/forums.bff.bz2

COREUTILS

Code:

michael@x071:[/home/michael]/opt/bin/du -sk /tmp/* | sort -n | tail
3520    /tmp/openssh_xxx
4704    /tmp/waitUploaderTmp_7078008.0
4704    /tmp/waitUploaderTmp_7078008.0.tmp
8452    /tmp/ibm.bff
17656   /tmp/891c0bbd
27888   /tmp/93b06705msd
40008   /tmp/aixtools.perl.5.14.4.0.I
41152   /tmp/named.tcpdump
56900   /tmp/rootvg.20140814.bff.bz2
60332   /tmp/forums.bff.bz2

COREUTILS using -h
I think this is what you seem to be looking for - with the letters behind the size. However, note the very very different results when using sort!

Code:

michael@x071:[/home/michael]/opt/bin/du -sh /tmp/* | sort -n | tail
440K    /tmp/jpzcd8-alqe
440K    /tmp/jpzcdV-alqg
440K    /tmp/jpzcdYDalyc
500K    /tmp/jpzcd-4al7d
500K    /tmp/jpzcd6-alqf
500K    /tmp/jpzcdKDalyb
500K    /tmp/jpzcd_4al7c
500K    /tmp/jpzcd_6al7a

Now my largest file is not showing up at the end - because numerically "sort" 500K is larger than 59M. So, just be careful when using sort!

Code:

michael@x071:[/home/michael]/opt/bin/du -h /tmp/forums.bff.bz2        
59M     /tmp/forums.bff.bz2