Re: Possible enhancement: file count

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Fernando,

On 02/29/2016 10:48 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 02/29/2016 08:23 AM, Fernando Pereira wrote:
>
> > Anyway, I was looking for the most efficient way to do that and I couldn't
> > find  satisfying answer.
>
> But 'find | wc' IS efficient, and already exists on every machine,

Additionally, once you start drilling-down to find more detailed information 
about the usage, you'll likely need find's features anyhow:

Few examples (since you've mentioned 'small files'):

find files smaller than 10K:

   find . -type f -size -10K

find files larger than 1G:

   find . -type f -size +1G

find empty files:

   find . -type f -size 0

find files of specific extension:

   find . -type f -iname '*.mp4'

Similarly, you can use find to find files that have not been modified in the 
last X days,
or created less than 24 hours ago, etc. etc.

A useful utility to investigate file sizes will end-up re-implementing many of 
these fine-grained predicates.

I would recommend learning how to use 'find' to its full potential, then for 
the most commonly-used operation,
either create a small shell script, or a shell alias.
A brief tutorial: http://crashcourse.housegordon.org/find-and-delete.html

Example, the following alias will list files larger than 1G, with the size, 
owner, and path:

    alias find_large_files='find . -type f -size +1G -printf "%s\t%u\t%p\n" 
2>/dev/null'

Using find in combination of other programs will allow you greater flexibility 
in finding the information you need.

Example, this will print the number of files owned by each user:

    $ sudo find /home -type f -printf "%u\t%f\0" 2>/dev/null \
             | sort -z | datamash -z --group 1 count 2 \
             | tr '\0' '\n' | numfmt --field=2 --to=iec

(note: numfmt is available since coreutils 8.21, and gnu datamash is available 
here: http://gnu.org/s/datamash/ ).

If you need more information, consider using one of the graphical programs to 
display 'tree map' view of your directories
(e.g. https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Baobab or https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu ).

regards,
 - assaf