A Benford's law bucketizer on file sizes in a directory

ben.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import subprocess

# First, build up the results file. it'll have the form:
#      110 vidioc-g-dv-preset.xml
linecount_cmd = "rm results; for i in *; do find $i -execdir wc -c '{}' \; " + \
    ">> results; done;"
os.system(linecount_cmd)

# Then figure out how many are in each bucket (linecount's initial digit)
bucket_cmd = 'for i in `jot 9`; do egrep "^[ ]*$i" results| ' + \
    'wc -l; done  > counts'
os.system(bucket_cmd)

# And how many total files there are...
total_cmd = 'wc -l results'
p = subprocess.Popen(total_cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
(total, _) = p.communicate()

total = int(total.split()[0])

for i,count in enumerate(file('counts', 'r').readlines()):
    print '"%d": %0.5f,' % (i + 1, 100 * (float(count) / total))

print "Record count:", total

os.system('echo "biggest:" && sort --general-numeric-sort -b results '
          '| tail -n 1')