Linux show files in directory larger than 1 GB and show size

Question

I am trying to find a command that displays files larger than 1 GB and displays those files ordered by size. I have tried find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -size +1G -print0 |xargs -0 du -h |sort -rh but for some reason this displays files of size that are not greater than 1 GB. For example this is in the output 1.0K ./<repo>/.git/info

Kamil Maciorowski · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-05T01:08:15.703

7

There are at least two possible causes:

Maybe your find prints nothing. In this case xargs runs du -h which is equivalent to du -h .. Investigate --no-run-if-empty option of GNU xargs. Or better get used to find … -exec … instead of find … | xargs …. Like this:
```
find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -size +1G -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh
```
find -size tests (almost) what du --apparent-size shows, while du without this option may greatly disagree, especially when the file is sparse. The option is not portable.

I think in your case the first cause is the culprit. Note ./<repo>/.git/info couldn't come from find . -maxdepth 2 -type f because its depth is 3. This means du operated recursively on some directory.

edited Dec 05 '20 at 01:08

answered Dec 05 '20 at 00:54

Kamil Maciorowski

21,864

Brilliant! find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -size +1G -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh works as expected. Are there any implications I should be aware of when running find ... -exec instead of find … | xargs …? New to this area, appreciate any knowledge. – griffin_cosgrove Dec 07 '20 at 17:02
1

@griffin_cosgrove I find find -exec more straightforward than find … | xargs … because xargs has its options and quirks. Read good answers here and here. – Kamil Maciorowski Dec 07 '20 at 17:44
thanks! this has been helpful – griffin_cosgrove Dec 17 '20 at 23:35

Linux show files in directory larger than 1 GB and show size

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