du -h, sorted

A humble offering, hoping to find a place where its perlishness won't be scorned. On another site, I got a little obsessed with this question I came across: How can I get sorted, human-readable output from du? It doesn't have a sort option, so you have to pass it to another program, like sort:

du | sort -nr
[download]

But if you want human-readable output, you can't do that, because sort can't sort it numerically. Others were offering shell solutions that invoked du on each item twice, once before being passed through sort, and once after for the human-readable verison. Wasteful! After finding solution in Awk, I wrote this "one-liner":

du -B1 | sort -nr | perl -e '@h=qw(b K M G);for(<>){($s,@f)=split/\s+/
+;$e=3;$e-- while(1024**$e>$s);$v=($s/(1024**$e));printf "%-8s%s\n",sp
+rintf($v>=100?"%d%s":"%.1f%s",$v,$h[$e]),@f;}'
[download]

But then I realized it'd probably be better to use Perl for the sorting, and got this shorter result:

du -h | perl -e 'sub h{%h=(K=>10,M=>20,G=>30);($n,$u)=shift=~/([0-9.]+
+)(\D)/;return $n*2**$h{$u}}print sort{h($b)<=>h($a)}<>;'
[download]

Both of them return human-readable disk usage output, sorted largest item first:

4.4M    .
3.6M    ./colors
372K    ./plugin
128K    ./autoload
100K    ./syntax
100K    ./doc
[download]

I almost posted this to the 'Obfuscation' area, but I thought this would be more appropriate. I am prepared to do penance if I was mistaken.

Update: Thanks to hbm, grinder, and Roy Johnson, a significantly smaller version has been golfed (putting it here because it's buried around ^7 in the comments):

perl -e'%h=map{/.\s/;99**(ord$&&7)-$`,$_}`du -h`;die@h{sort%h}'
[download]

Comment on du -h, sorted Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: du -h, sorted by grinder (Bishop) on Feb 25, 2009 at 21:56 UTC
But then I realized it'd probably be better to use Perl for the sorting, and got this shorter result Now that sounds like a challenge... Read more... (1504 Bytes) ... 90 88 characters. • another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: du -h, sorted by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Feb 25, 2009 at 22:58 UTC
Are you sure yours gets correct results? I'm getting 372K between 4.4M and 3.6M. perl -e 'sub c{pop=~/[GMK]/;ord($&)&7}print sort{c($b)<=>c($a)or$b<=>$ +a}`du -h`' [download] Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: du -h, sorted by grinder (Bishop) on Feb 26, 2009 at 00:17 UTC
You're absolutely correct. Allow me to replace it by the following, clocking in at 87. perl -e'sub h{pop=~/(...)(.)/&&{M,1e3,G,1e6}->{$2}+$1}print sort{h($b) +<=>h$a}`du -h`' [download] update: No wait! There's something in your idea of bitanding... Just have to get rid of the second spaceship comparator... perl -e'sub c{pop=~/[GMK]/;(ord$&&7).1e3+$`}print sort{c($b)<=>c$a}`du + -h`' [download] 76 strokes. • another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: du -h, sorted by hbm (Hermit) on Feb 26, 2009 at 03:00 UTC
Re^4: du -h, sorted by bellaire (Hermit) on Feb 26, 2009 at 15:41 UTC
Re^5: du -h, sorted by hbm (Hermit) on Feb 26, 2009 at 16:28 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^2: du -h, sorted by hbm (Hermit) on Feb 25, 2009 at 23:09 UTC
I like your subtle omission of parens from `h$a`, versus `h($b)`. But to sort correctly, I tweaked slightly to use the OP's 10,20,30 values. perl -e 'sub h{pop=~/(...)(.)/&&$12*{K,10,M,20,G,30}->{$2}}print sor +t{h($b)<=>h$a}`du -h`' [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: du -h, sorted by Tanktalus (Canon) on Feb 27, 2009 at 00:48 UTC
Honestly, though, I'd skip du, and just use cog's FileSys::DiskUsage module. It wouldn't be as short, but it'd be, um, a bit more readable ;-) `#! /usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Filesys::DiskUsage qw(du); use Sort::Key qw(ikeysort); my @files = @ARGV ? @ARGV : glob '*'; my %sizes = du( { 'make-hash' => 1, 'recursive' => 0, 'sector-size' => 1024, }, @files); @files = ikeysort { $sizes{$_} } keys %sizes; my %config = ( human => 1, 'truncate-readable' => 2 ); printf "%8s %s\n", Filesys::DiskUsage::_convert($sizes{$_}, %config), $_ for @files;` [download] But, that's just me. (And look at all the other cool things you can do with Filesys::DiskUsage, or even the output format!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: du -h, sorted by hbm (Hermit) on Feb 27, 2009 at 17:56 UTC
I can't stop looking at this ~~unbeliev~~ unbellairevable one-liner! Alas, in your Update, you went from `7(ord$&&30)` to `99(ord$&&7)`, and the new one mis-sorts empty files. And I can eke out one last character in a reversed sort: perl -e '%h=map{/.\s/;7x(ord$&&10)+$`,$_}`du -h`;die@h{sort%h}' [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: du -h, sorted by DrHyde (Prior) on Feb 26, 2009 at 11:01 UTC
+1, useful	[reply]