7

I'd like to output the total disk space for a collection of files output by find.

One of my files has spaces in its name, which is causing du to return a 'No such file or directory' message for it.

chris@chris-x1c6:/media/E/2Videos$ du -ch $(find . -maxdepth 1 -iname "*syed*")
du: cannot access './The': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Case': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Against': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Adnan': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Syed': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'S01E01': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv': No such file or directory
4.0G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E02.In.Between.the.Truth.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
4.0G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E03.1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
3.5G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E04.Time.is.the.Killer.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
12G total

I've tried dealing with the spaces by piping into sed and either wrapping filenames in quotes or adding escape characters to the blanks, neither of which allows du to recognize the filename with blanks.

It's a little confusing because this works:

chris@chris-x1c6:/media/E/2Videos$ du -ch ./The\ Case\ Against\ Adnan\ Syed\ S01E01\ 1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv 
4.1G    ./The Case Against Adnan Syed S01E01 1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
4.1G    total

But this doesn't:

chris@chris-x1c6:/media/E/2Videos$ du -ch $(find . -maxdepth 1 -iname "*syed*" | sed 's/ /\\ /g')
du: cannot access './The\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Case\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Against\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Adnan\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'Syed\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access 'S01E01\': No such file or directory
du: cannot access '1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv': No such file or directory
4.0G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E02.In.Between.the.Truth.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
4.0G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E03.1080p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
3.5G    ./The.Case.Against.Adnan.Syed.S01E04.Time.is.the.Killer.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
12G total

Is there a better way to deal with this?

1

2 Answers 2

22

What if we let find handle the filenames?

find . -maxdepth 1 -iname '*syed*' -exec du -ch {} +
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  • Thought I'd tried this (though may have omitted the +). But works like a charm, many thanks!
    – Chris
    Aug 17, 2019 at 22:52
12

How about this?:

find . -maxdepth 1 -iname '*syed*' -print0 | xargs -0 du -ch

Explanation of options:

  • find – What you were using to find files
    • -print0 – Split each result with a null character, which is a character that cannot occur in a filename
  • xargs – Assembles arguments to a command piped from standard input (stdin)
    • -0 – Receive each argument split by a null character
    • du -ch – The command to which you want to pass file arguments

As for why your proposed sed way of escaping doesn't work, the \ characters you're trying to add are put in after the shell argument delimiter ("") escaping has already taken place. Each word, delimited by space, is already an argument.

My solution with xargs ensures that each argument is a path from find, regardless of spaces.

1
  • This is helpful, commentary on sed in particular, thank you. Looks like xargs and the -exec option work in a similar fashion per find's man page: ...The command line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines.
    – Chris
    Aug 17, 2019 at 22:51

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