You can also do this with just du. Just to be on the safe side I'm using this version of du:
$ du --version
du (GNU coreutils) 8.5
The approach:
$ du -ah ..DIR.. | grep -v "/$" | sort -rh
Breakdown of approach
The command du -ah DIR will produce a list of all the files and directories in a given directory DIR. The -h will produce human readable sizes which I prefer. If you don't want them then drop that switch. I'm using the head -6 just to limit the amount of output!
$ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | head -6
4.4M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/W820_W1020_WirelessFrames_exUG_GLB_en.pdf
624K /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/easyshare_w820.pdf
4.9M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame/W820_W1020WirelessFrameExUG_GLB_en.pdf
9.8M /home/saml/Downloads/kodak_W820_wireless_frame
8.0K /home/saml/Downloads/bugs.xls
604K /home/saml/Downloads/netgear_gs724t/GS7xxT_HIG_5Jan10.pdf
Easy enough to sort it smallest to biggest:
$ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | sort -h | head -6
0 /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/monitoring/nagios/nagios-check_sip-1.3/usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_ldaps
0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/0/index/write.lock
0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/0/translog/translog-1365292480753
0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/1/index/write.lock
0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/1/translog/translog-1365292480946
0 /home/saml/Downloads/data/elasticsearch/nodes/0/indices/logstash-2013.04.06/2/index/write.lock
Reverse it, biggest to smallest:
$ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | sort -rh | head -6
10G /home/saml/Downloads/
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible
2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy
Don't show me the directory, just the files:
$ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | grep -v "/$" | sort -rh | head -6
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible
2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy
835M /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/cad_cam_cae/salome/Salome-V6_5_0-LGPL-x86_64.run
If you just want the list of smallest to biggest, but the top 6 offending files you can reverse the sort switch, drop (-r), and use tail -6 instead of the head -6.
$ du -ah ~/Downloads/ | grep -v "/$" | sort -h | tail -6
835M /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive/cad_cam_cae/salome/Salome-V6_5_0-LGPL-x86_64.run
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy
1.5G /home/saml/Downloads/digital_blasphemy/db1440ppng.zip
2.3G /home/saml/Downloads/apps_archive
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible
3.8G /home/saml/Downloads/audible/audio_books
