perhaps I just need to learn the right switches to apply to sort on the other side of a pipe, but I have often wanted to sort the results of du in descending order and have it get it how to parse the -s(ummary) -h (uman) readable output.
So instead of: $ du -sh /var/log/* 28K /var/log/apt 76K /var/log/auth.log 4.0K /var/log/boot 4.0K /var/log/daemon.log 36K /var/log/dmesg 4.0K /var/log/dpkg.log 12K /var/log/fsck 1.8M /var/log/installer 4.0K /var/log/kern.log 0 /var/log/mail.err 36K /var/log/mail.info 36K /var/log/mail.log 0 /var/log/mail.warn 4.0K /var/log/messages 40K /var/log/partimage 16K /var/log/syslog You'd have instead . . . $ du -sh --sort-order=desc /var/log/* 1.8M /var/log/installer 76K /var/log/auth.log 40K /var/log/partimage 36K /var/log/mail.info 36K /var/log/mail.log 16K /var/log/syslog 36K /var/log/dmesg 28K /var/log/apt 12K /var/log/fsck 4.0K /var/log/boot 4.0K /var/log/daemon.log 4.0K /var/log/dpkg.log 4.0K /var/log/kern.log 4.0K /var/log/messages 0 /var/log/mail.err 0 /var/log/mail.warn -- Hugh Esco 678-921-8186 x21 YourMessageDelivered.com Keeping Your Group in the Loop No Matter How Large or How Small
