man/cat1p/du.1p.txt

du(P) du(P)
 
 
 
 
 
NAME
       du - estimate file space usage
 
SYNOPSIS
       du [-a | -s][-kx][-H | -L][file ...]
 
DESCRIPTION
       By default, the du utility shall write to standard out-
       put the size of the file space allocated to, and the
       size of the file space allocated to each subdirectory
       of, the file hierarchy rooted in each of the specified
       files. By default, when a symbolic link is encountered
       on the command line or in the file hierarchy, du shall
       count the size of the symbolic link (rather than the
       file referenced by the link), and shall not follow the
       link to another portion of the file hierarchy. The size
       of the file space allocated to a file of type directory
       shall be defined as the sum total of space allocated to
       all files in the file hierarchy rooted in the directory
       plus the space allocated to the directory itself.
 
       When du cannot stat() files or stat() or read directo-
       ries, it shall report an error condition and the final
       exit status is affected. Files with multiple links shall
       be counted and written for only one entry. The directory
       entry that is selected in the report is unspecified. By
       default, file sizes shall be written in 512-byte units,
       rounded up to the next 512-byte unit.
 
OPTIONS
       The du utility shall conform to the Base Definitions
       volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility
       Syntax Guidelines.
 
       The following options shall be supported:
 
       -a In addition to the default output, report the
              size of each file not of type directory in the
              file hierarchy rooted in the specified file.
              Regardless of the presence of the -a option, non-
              directories given as file operands shall always
              be listed.
 
       -H If a symbolic link is specified on the command
              line, du shall count the size of the file or file
              hierarchy referenced by the link.
 
       -k Write the files sizes in units of 1024 bytes,
              rather than the default 512-byte units.
 
       -L If a symbolic link is specified on the command
              line or encountered during the traversal of a
              file hierarchy, du shall count the size of the
              file or file hierarchy referenced by the link.
 
       -s Instead of the default output, report only the
              total sum for each of the specified files.
 
       -x When evaluating file sizes, evaluate only those
              files that have the same device as the file spec-
              ified by the file operand.
 
 
       Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive
       options -H and -L shall not be considered an error. The
       last option specified shall determine the behavior of
       the utility.
 
OPERANDS
       The following operand shall be supported:
 
       file The pathname of a file whose size is to be writ-
              ten. If no file is specified, the current direc-
              tory shall be used.
 
 
STDIN
       Not used.
 
INPUT FILES
       None.
 
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the
       execution of du:
 
       LANG Provide a default value for the internationaliza-
              tion variables that are unset or null. (See the
              Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,
              Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for
              the precedence of internationalization variables
              used to determine the values of locale cate-
              gories.)
 
       LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the
              values of all the other internationalization
              variables.
 
       LC_CTYPE
              Determine the locale for the interpretation of
              sequences of bytes of text data as characters
              (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-
              byte characters in arguments).
 
       LC_MESSAGES
              Determine the locale that should be used to
              affect the format and contents of diagnostic mes-
              sages written to standard error.
 
       NLSPATH
              Determine the location of message catalogs for
              the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
 
 
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.
 
STDOUT
       The output from du shall consist of the amount of space
       allocated to a file and the name of the file, in the
       following format:
 
 
              "%d %s\n", <size>, <pathname>
 
STDERR
       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic
       messages.
 
OUTPUT FILES
       None.
 
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.
 
EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values shall be returned:
 
        0 Successful completion.
 
       >0 An error occurred.
 
 
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.
 
       The following sections are informative.
 
APPLICATION USAGE
       None.
 
EXAMPLES
       None.
 
RATIONALE
       The use of 512-byte units is historical practice and
       maintains compatibility with ls and other utilities in
       this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. This does not man-
       date that the file system itself be based on 512-byte
       blocks. The -k option was added as a compromise measure.
       It was agreed by the standard developers that 512 bytes
       was the best default unit because of its complete his-
       torical consistency on System V (versus the mixed
       512/1024-byte usage on BSD systems), and that a -k
       option to switch to 1024-byte units was a good compro-
       mise. Users who prefer the 1024-byte quantity can easily
       alias du to du -k without breaking the many historical
       scripts relying on the 512-byte units.
 
       The -b option was added to an early proposal to provide
       a resolution to the situation where System V and BSD
       systems give figures for file sizes in blocks, which is
       an implementation-defined concept. (In common usage, the
       block size is 512 bytes for System V and 1024 bytes for
       BSD systems.) However, -b was later deleted, since the
       default was eventually decided as 512-byte units.
 
       Historical file systems provided no way to obtain exact
       figures for the space allocation given to files. There
       are two known areas of inaccuracies in historical file
       systems: cases of indirect blocks being used by the file
       system or sparse files yielding incorrectly high values.
       An indirect block is space used by the file system in
       the storage of the file, but that need not be counted in
       the space allocated to the file. A sparse file is one in
       which an lseek() call has been made to a position beyond
       the end of the file and data has subsequently been writ-
       ten at that point. A file system need not allocate all
       the intervening zero-filled blocks to such a file. It is
       up to the implementation to define exactly how accurate
       its methods are.
 
       The -a and -s options were mutually-exclusive in the
       original version of du. The POSIX Shell and Utilities
       description is implied by the language in the SVID where
       -s is described as causing "only the grand total" to be
       reported. Some systems may produce output for -sa, but
       a Strictly Conforming POSIX Shell and Utilities Applica-
       tion cannot use that combination.
 
       The -a and -s options were adopted from the SVID except
       that the System V behavior of not listing non-directo-
       ries explicitly given as operands, unless the -a option
       is specified, was considered a bug; the BSD-based
       behavior (report for all operands) is mandated. The
       default behavior of du in the SVID with regard to
       reporting the failure to read files (it produces no mes-
       sages) was considered counter-intuitive, and thus it was
       specified that the POSIX Shell and Utilities default
       behavior shall be to produce such messages. These mes-
       sages can be turned off with shell redirection to
       achieve the System V behavior.
 
       The -x option is historical practice on recent BSD sys-
       tems. It has been adopted by this volume of
       IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 because there was no other histori-
       cal method of limiting the du search to a single file
       hierarchy. This limitation of the search is necessary to
       make it possible to obtain file space usage information
       about a file system on which other file systems are
       mounted, without having to resort to a lengthy find and
       awk script.
 
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.
 
SEE ALSO
       ls , the System Interfaces volume of
       IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, stat()
 
COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in
       electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition,
       Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operat-
       ing System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Speci-
       fications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Insti-
       tute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and
       The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
       this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
       is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.open-
       group.org/unix/online.html .
 
 
 
POSIX 2003 du(P)