See size of your top 10 largest files and folders.

bigfiles.sh

#!/bin/bash

## Takes path as argument ($1) or uses current path instead (.) if no argument given.
path="${1:-.}"

## Gets size for items in path and reports the top 10 files and folders.
du -sh ${path}/* | sort -rh | head -n ${2:-10}

This simple script shows sizes of top 10 largest files and folders for a given path, or if no path is given for the current path.

The magic is in the ${1:-.} piece. It is the traditional positional argument $1, but with a default value . in case the argument is omitted. I've stolen this trick from this awesome awk tutorial. (It's awesome, because it teaches more than awk 😉 )

Update

• I've removed an underscore from the file name so it's easier to call the script with TAB completion.
• I've added a second (optional) parameter to display different number of items. Provide any number.
  • Note that if you use this you also need the first parameter, so provide at least a dot . for the current folder, e.g. bigfiles.sh . 20.

Evgeny uses the following:

# Use this command in your home dir to locate large files:
find . -type f -size +10G | xargs -I {} ls -sh {}