UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello!

I'm trying to find out the total file size of a subset list in a directory. For example, I do not need to know the total file size of all the files in a directory, but I need to know what the total size is of say, "ls -l *FEB08*" in a directory. Is there any easy way of doing this?

Thank you,

I think this will do it (unless I'm missing something...it is almost lunch )

Code:

ls -lt *FEB08* | awk '{tot += $5} END {tot=tot/1024 ; printf(" TOTAL SIZE (kb): 
 %4.2f\n",tot)}'

Thank you! Yes, that worked very well. But now I'm curious about a couple of things (i.e., please explain a little of how it works):

Instead of bothering you with even more questions than, I looked awk in google and found gnu.org and searched on +=. It gave me this:

ls -l files | awk '{ x += $5 }
END { print "total K-bytes: " (x + 1023)/1024 }'

1. Should I be using the (x + 1023)/1024 stated above (I'm wondering why they have that)?
2. I have GB of files, is there a different number I can use to get GB or do I just add 2 zero's?
3. Why %4.2f\n (what does that mean)?

Thanks!

1. Not sure why they are using 1023, quite frankly.

2. If you have GB of files, divide x (or tot in my example) by 1073741824

3. %4.2f\n:

% is prefix to a format code
4 means four places to left of decimal
. format number with a decimal
2 means two places to right of decimal
f means end of format code
\n newline