[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date.
From: |
William Brendling |
Subject: |
Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date. |
Date: |
Fri, 3 Jun 2005 14:25:52 +0100 |
I use the "du" command to identify directories for potential
archiving. Candidate directories are those that are taking a lot of
space, and which are not currently being worked on. The "du" command
conveniently identified the first. To find out the latter requires
walking the directory tree, and performing a stat on each file (to
obtain the last modified date). "du" already does most of this.
Walking a large directory tree twice, once to collect the file sizes,
and a second time to collect the last modified date can be time
consuming. I therefore suggest that "du" should have an option to
collect the latest last modified date for the files in a directory.
I have hacked together a version of "du" that does this, taking the
date formatting code from the "date" utility. If my modified program
is run as (for example) "du --last-modified", it produces output such
as the following:
368 2004/03/12.19:18 ./config
1004 2005/06/02.13:53 ./m4
560 2004/03/12.19:18 ./old/fileutils
256 2004/03/12.19:18 ./old/sh-utils
336 2004/03/12.19:18 ./old/textutils
1156 2004/03/12.19:18 ./old
14316 2005/06/02.13:53 ./po
636 2005/06/02.14:12 ./lib/.deps
6396 2005/06/02.14:12 ./lib
760 2005/06/02.14:13 ./src/.deps
19692 2005/06/02.18:47 ./src
1116 2005/06/02.13:53 ./doc
824 2005/06/02.13:53 ./man
52 2005/06/02.13:53 ./tests/basename
68 2005/06/02.13:53 ./tests/chgrp
I chose this default date format so that the "sort" utility will
regard it as one field, and so that alphabetical sorting is the same
as date sorting.
I can also specify the date format required, using the same syntax as
for the "date" command. For example, using "du
--last-modified=%e/%b/%Y" produces:
368 12/Mar/2004 ./config
1004 2/Jun/2005 ./m4
560 12/Mar/2004 ./old/fileutils
256 12/Mar/2004 ./old/sh-utils
336 12/Mar/2004 ./old/textutils
1156 12/Mar/2004 ./old
14316 2/Jun/2005 ./po
636 2/Jun/2005 ./lib/.deps
6396 2/Jun/2005 ./lib
760 2/Jun/2005 ./src/.deps
19692 2/Jun/2005 ./src
1116 2/Jun/2005 ./doc
824 2/Jun/2005 ./man
52 2/Jun/2005 ./tests/basename
68 2/Jun/2005 ./tests/chgrp
Without the "--last-modified" switch, the modified program functions
as previously.
If you think my suggestion worthwhile, I would be happy to contribute
my modified code back to the GNU project, but I am very much a GNU
newbie. I don't know how to generate patch files. Also I have not made
any attempt to update the man files or other documentation. Please let
me know if you would like me to submit the code, and if so, how I
should do so ?
Alternately, you could probably produce a better implementation, based
upon my description above.
Yours sincerely,
Bill Brendling.
- Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date.,
William Brendling <=
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., James Youngman, 2005/06/03
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., Jim Meyering, 2005/06/04
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., William Brendling, 2005/06/07
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., Jim Meyering, 2005/06/07
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., William Brendling, 2005/06/08
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., Paul Eggert, 2005/06/08
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., William Brendling, 2005/06/09
- Re: Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., Paul Eggert, 2005/06/09
- Message not available
- Suggested enhancement to du command - show last modified date., William Brendling, 2005/06/23