How to show directory sizes in tree format with correct values and depth control

Question

I can't solve what I want using the tree, du, or df commands.

I'm using:

• du version 9.6
• tree version 2.2.1

What I want:

For the current directory, list all directories recursively to a depth of 3, showing their size and ordering them by size. For clarity, each level of subdirectory ought to be indented.

Using du -h -d 3 does not provide a tree view.

Now, tree seems to be the command to use, but I do not understand the output, so I made a test directory and here are the outputs. In the following, I do not understand the answer with

• tree --du -h -L 2 for the directory size.
• tree --du -h -L 3 for the directory size of immo2 as is 16M and not 4.0K, as well as immo and root size 102M and not 86M.

Remark: tree --du -h -L 2 and tree -du -h -L 2 do not provide the same output.

Thanks.

$ tree --du -h -L 3
[ 86M]  .
└── [ 86M]  sub1
    ├── [3.6M]  immo
    │   ├── [ 670]  00Tree.html
    │   ├── [416K]  2013-08-27_120009.jpg
    │   ├── [3.2M]  2014-04-09_093940.jpg
    │   └── [4.0K]  immo_2
    └── [ 82M]  ogg
        ├── [ 141]  00Tree.html
        └── [ 82M]  2020-06-21.ogg

  86M used in 5 directories, 5 files
$
$ tree --du -h -L 2
[4.0K]  .
└── [4.0K]  sub1
    ├── [4.0K]  immo
    └── [   0]  ogg

 4.0K used in 4 directories, 0 files
$
$ du -h -d 3
16M ./sub1/immo/immo_2
20M ./sub1/immo
83M ./sub1/ogg
102M    ./sub1
102M    .
$

P.S. In the meantime,

1/ filed a bug report for tree cmd.

2/ I found an awesome app: https://apps.kde.org/fr/filelight/

Answer 1

Since tree --du -L 3 only shows the sizes of things down to the given depth but ignores everything below, giving incorrect total sizes for directories, allow tree to see to the bottom of the directory tree and then cut off the branches that are longer than what you're interested in.

The output from tree --du will contain a [ in column 1 for the top level, in column 5 for level 1, and in column 4*n + 1 for level n. To prune branches at level 3 or deeper, corresponding to using -L 2, we therefore remove all lines whose first [ is found in column 13 or later.

tree --du -h --sort=size . | sed -E '/^[^[]{12,}\[/d'
tree --du -h --sort=size . | grep -v -E '^[^[]{12,}\['

Change 12 to 16 for the equivalent of -L 3.

Or, easier on the eyes, only print the lines that contain a [ within the first 12 columns (does not print the summary line):

tree --du -h --sort=size . | sed -n -E '/^.{0,11}\[/p'
tree --du -h --sort=size . | grep -E '^.{0,11}\['

Change 11 to 15 for the equivalent of -L 3.

---

Example:

Listing the full structure:

$ tree --du -h --sort=size .
[164M]  .
├── [106M]  book
│   └── [106M]  c
│       └── [106M]  d
│           └── [106M]  file
└── [ 59M]  bird
    └── [ 59M]  c2
        └── [ 59M]  file2

 164M used in 6 directories, 2 files

Using -L 2 means not reaching down to the actual files:

$ tree --du -h --sort=size -L 2 .
[ 20K]  .
├── [8.0K]  bird
│   └── [4.0K]  c2
└── [8.0K]  book
    └── [4.0K]  c

  20K used in 5 directories, 0 files

So instead, we list the full structure and prune the deeper branches:

$ tree --du -h --sort=size . | grep -v -E '^[^[]{12,}\['
[164M]  .
├── [106M]  book
│   └── [106M]  c
└── [ 59M]  bird
    └── [ 59M]  c2

 164M used in 6 directories, 2 files

---

You also noted that tree --du and tree -du produce different outputs. This is because tree -du is the same as tree -d -u, which causes the utility to only report directories (-d) and to print the username or UID of the users owning them (-u).

Answer 2

It seems that tree --du doesn't recurse but just adds the sizes of the subdirs and if there's a -L argument saying it shouldn't descend into a subdirectory, it's size is never measured, and thus can't be added to the size of the directories above. Here tree --du also outputs a trailing line, trying to calculate the total usage, but that is (also) total bogus, as can be seen here:

grove@wai> tree --du -h -L 6
[100M]  .
└── [100M]  a
    └── [100M]  b
        └── [100M]  c
            └── [100M]  d
                └── [100M]  e
                    └── [100M]  f

 600M used in 6 directories, 1 file

(in case it's not clear from the main output, there's one file of 100M size in the f directory)

I would consider both behaviours bugs, and if I used tree myself would file a bug report, now I'll leave it to you (or someone who cares).