linux script for loop

Question

I have a small question regarding for loops in linux bash scripts.

I have a folder that contains 10000 files. I wrote for loop to list 100 files from the 10000.

For a in ~/Desktop/folder/*.txt
Do

    Echo $a

Done

However, I need to list the biggest 100 files in the folder and not the first 100 files depending on alphabet.

William Pursell · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-04 04:18:12Z

2

Why are you using a for loop? If you just want to see the 100 biggest files, do:

ls -S | head -n 100

answered Feb 4, 2013 at 4:18

William Pursell

214k49 gold badges279 silver badges317 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Just as an addon - if you want the filesizes as well you can do ls -Ss | head -n 100

nemo · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-04 04:18:00Z

0

If you do the loop just to get the files, be aware that there is a tool for that: ls.

See the man page of ls for commands which suit your problem: man ls

To answer your question:

You can use the output of ls -S, which sorts the files by size to loop over:

ls -S *.txt | while read file; do 
    echo $file
done

To limit the amount of files, you can use head. The following example will give output you the first 100 lines from the output of ls.

ls *.txt | head -n 100

answered Feb 4, 2013 at 4:18

nemo

58.3k15 gold badges144 silver badges145 bronze badges