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Calculating a directory's size using Python?

Asked 2009-09-08T07:06:42.503
309

Before I re-invent this particular wheel, has anybody got a nice routine for calculating the size of a directory using Python? It would be very nice if the routine would format the size nicely in Mb/Gb etc.

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2 Answers

423

This walks all sub-directories; summing file sizes:

import os

def get_size(start_path = '.'):
    total_size = 0
    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(start_path):
        for f in filenames:
            fp = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
            # skip if it is symbolic link
            if not os.path.islink(fp):
                total_size += os.path.getsize(fp)

    return total_size

print(get_size(), 'bytes')

And a oneliner for fun using os.listdir (Does not include sub-directories):

import os
sum(os.path.getsize(f) for f in os.listdir('.') if os.path.isfile(f))

Reference:

Updated To use os.path.getsize, this is clearer than using the os.stat().st_size method.

Thanks to ghostdog74 for pointing this out!

os.stat - st_size Gives the size in bytes. Can also be used to get file size and other file related information.

import os

nbytes = sum(d.stat().st_size for d in os.scandir('.') if d.is_file())

Update 2018

If you use Python 3.4 or previous then you may consider using the more efficient walk method provided by the third-party answered 2009-09-08T07:48:15.660

7

You can do something like this :

import commands   
size = commands.getoutput('du -sh /path/').split()[0]

in this case I have not tested the result before returning it, if you want you can check it with commands.getstatusoutput.

answered 2012-11-20T14:30:24.137

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