Question: How can I list the true file and directory sizes on UNIX?

boadmin@nshost1>$ ls -la
total 12130522
drwxr-xr-x   5 boadmin  boadmin      512 Aug  4 14:30 .
drwxr-xr-x  31 boadmin  boadmin     1024 Aug  1 22:00 ..
drwxr-xr-x   5 boadmin  boadmin      512 May  7 05:48 DISK_1
drwxr-xr-x   3 boadmin  boadmin      512 May  7 05:47 DISK_2
drwxr-xr-x   3 boadmin  boadmin      512 May 31 14:02 sp3
-rw-r--r--   1 boadmin  boadmin  6207767040 Aug  4 14:33 sp3.tar

The short answer, use the following command: du -sh *

boadmin@nshost1>$ du -sh *
634M   DISK_1
152M   DISK_2
5.8G   sp3
5.8G   sp3.tar

du - is the disk usage utility on UNIX
 s - is to sum the files within the directory
 h - is the filesize in human readable format, megs, gigs, etc
 * - to group it on all elements in the current directory, or specify
any path here, or leave empty to summarize to one group

The long answer, use the following command and start reading: man du

Related Posts:

1. Unix ps command – Long Process Listing
2. Unix LS Command With Colors… Without the —color Option
3. Unix Shell – Check If Directory Is Empty