Get size of a file using ls on all UNIX OSes

wisecracker · May 3, 2013, 3:12am

Hi Yoda...

There are definately leading spaces and could be a trailing space as well.
Also newline(s) may be part of the result...

Last login: Fri May  3 08:01:47 on ttys000
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$ wc -c < SCOPE.GIF
   17424
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$

EDIT:

Last login: Fri May  3 08:01:47 on ttys000
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$ wc -c < SCOPE.GIF
   17424
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$ wc -c < SCOPE.GIF > length.txt
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$ ls -l len*
-rw-r--r--  1 barrywalker  staff  9  3 May 08:15 length.txt
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$ hexdump -C length.txt
00000000  20 20 20 31 37 34 32 34  0a                       |   17424.|
00000009
Barrys-MacBook-Pro:~ barrywalker$

There as a proof test...

SkySmart · May 4, 2013, 6:16pm

madeingermany:

You are certainly using /usr/ucb/ls
an old version of ls, only present to provide compatibility with the old SunOS 4, that was terminated 10 years ago (and in turn was compatible with 4.2 BSD Unix).
Use
ls -lo
or
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin ls -l
or both
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin ls -lo
or also set locale with
LC_ALL=C PATH=/bin:/usr/bin ls -lo

thank you!!!!

ls -lo seems to be perfect. not sure if it'll work on every UNIX hosts though. so far, i tested it on linux/sunos and it has the size of the file in the 4th column on both OSes. thank you!