Add up a column of numbers at the Unix shell

Question

Given a list of files in files.txt, I can get a list of their sizes like this:

cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30

which produces something like this:

  151552
  319488
 1536000
  225280

How can I get the total of all those numbers?

Answer 1

... | paste -sd+ - | bc

is the shortest one I've found (from the UNIX Command Line blog).

Edit: added the - argument for portability, thanks @Dogbert and @Owen.

Answer 2

Here goes

cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30 | 
  awk '{total = total + $1}END{print total}'

Answer 3

Instead of using cut to get the file size from output of ls -l, you can use directly:

$ cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | awk '{total += $5} END {print "Total:", total, "bytes"}'

Awk interprets "$5" as the fifth column. This is the column from ls -l that gives you the file size.

Answer 4

cat will not work if there are spaces in filenames. here is a perl one-liner instead.

perl -nle 'chomp; $x+=(stat($_))[7]; END{print $x}' files.txt

Answer 5

python3 -c"import os; print(sum(os.path.getsize(f) for f in open('files.txt').read().split()))"

Or if you just want to sum the numbers, pipe into:

python3 -c"import sys; print(sum(int(x) for x in sys.stdin))"

Answer 6

if you don't have bc installed, try

echo $(( $(... | paste -sd+ -) ))

instead of

... | paste -sd+ - | bc

$( ) <-- return the value of executing the command

$(( 1+2 )) <-- return the evaluated results

echo <-- echo it to the screen

Answer 7

You can use the following script if you just want to use shell scripting without awk or other interpreters:

#!/bin/bash

total=0

for number in `cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30`; do
   let total=$total+$number
done

echo $total

Answer 8

TMTWWTDI: Perl has a file size operator (-s)

perl -lne '$t+=-s;END{print $t}' files.txt

Answer 9

The whole ls -l and then cut is rather convoluted when you have stat. It is also vulnerable to the exact format of ls -l (it didn't work until I changed the column numbers for cut)

Also, fixed the useless use of cat.

<files.txt  xargs stat -c %s | paste -sd+ - | bc

Answer 10

cat files.txt | awk '{ total += $1} END {print total}'

You can use the awk to do the same it even skips the non integers

$ cat files.txt
1
2.3
3.4
ew
1

$ cat files.txt | awk '{ total += $1} END {print total}'
7.7

or you can use ls command and calculate human readable output

$ ls -l | awk '{ sum += $5} END  {hum[1024^3]="Gb"; hum[1024^2]="Mb"; hum[1024]="Kb"; for (x=1024^3; x>=1024; x/=1024) { if (sum>=x) { printf "%.2f %s\n",sum/x,hum[x]; break; } } if (sum<1024) print "1kb"; }'
15.69 Mb

$ ls -l *.txt | awk '{ sum += $5} END  {hum[1024^3]="Gb"; hum[1024^2]="Mb"; hum[1024]="Kb"; for (x=1024^3; x>=1024; x/=1024) { if (sum>=x) { printf "%.2f %s\n",sum/x,hum[x]; break; } } if (sum<1024) print "1kb"; }'
2.10 Mb

Answer 11

I would use "du" instead.

$ cat files.txt | xargs du -c | tail -1
4480    total

If you just want the number:

cat files.txt | xargs du -c | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}'

Answer 12

In ksh:

echo " 0 $(ls -l $(<files.txt) | awk '{print $5}' | tr '\n' '+') 0" | bc

Answer 13

... |xargs|tr \  +|bc
... |paste -sd+ -|bc

The first command is just one symbol longer (note, it must have two spaces after the backslash!), but it handles the cases with empty lines in a column, whereas the second command results in an invalid expression with extra pluses.

E.g.:

echo "2
3
5

" | paste -sd+ -

results in

2+3+5++

which bc cannot handle, whereas

echo "2
3
5

" | xargs | tr \  +

gives a valid expression

 2+3+5 

which can be piped into bc to get the final result

Answer 14

Pipe to gawk:

 cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30 | gawk 'BEGIN { sum = 0 } // { sum = sum + $0 } END { print sum }'

Answer 15

Here's mine

cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30 | sed -e :a -e '$!N;s/\n/+/;ta' | bc

Answer 16

#
#       @(#) addup.sh 1.0 90/07/19
#
#       Copyright (C) <heh> SjB, 1990
#       Adds up a column (default=last) of numbers in a file.
#       95/05/16 updated to allow (999) negative style numbers.


case $1 in

-[0-9])

        COLUMN=`echo $1 | tr -d -`

        shift

;;

*)

        COLUMN="NF"

;;

esac

echo "Adding up column .. $COLUMN .. of file(s) .. $*"

nawk  ' OFMT="%.2f"                                       # 1 "%12.2f"

        { x = '$COLUMN'                                   # 2

          neg = index($x, "$")                            # 3

          if (neg > 0) X = gsub("\\$", "", $x)

          neg = index($x, ",")                            # 4

          if (neg > 1) X = gsub(",", "", $x)

          neg = index($x, "(")                            # 8 neg (123 & change

          if (neg > 0) X = gsub("\\(", "", $x)

          if (neg > 0) $x = (-1 * $x)                     # it to "-123.00"

          neg = index($x, "-")                            # 5

          if (neg > 1) $x = (-1 * $x)                     # 6

          t += $x                                         # 7

          print "x is <<<", $x+0, ">>> running balance:", t

        } ' $*


# 1.  set numeric format to eliminate rounding errors
# 1.1 had to reset numeric format from 12.2f to .2f 95/05/16
#     when a computed number is assigned to a variable ( $x = (-1 * $x) )
#     it causes $x to use the OFMT so -1.23 = "________-1.23" vs "-1.23"
#     and that causes my #5 (negative check) to not work correctly because
#     the index returns a number >1 and to the neg neg than becomes a positive
#     this only occurs if the number happened to b a "(" neg number
# 2.  find the field we want to add up (comes from the shell or defaults
#     to the last field "NF") in the file
# 3.  check for a dollar sign ($) in the number - if there get rid of it
#     so we may add it correctly - $12 $1$2 $1$2$ $$1$$2$$ all = 12
# 4.  check for a comma (,) in the number - if there get rid of it so we
#     may add it correctly - 1,2 12, 1,,2 1,,2,, all = 12   (,12=0)
# 5.  check for negative numbers
# 6.  if x is a negative number in the form 999- "make" it a recognized
#     number like -999 - if x is a negative number like -999 already
#     the test fails (y is not >1) and this "true" negative is not made
#     positive
# 7.  accumulate the total
# 8.  if x is a negative number in the form (999) "make it a recognized
#     number like -999
# * Note that a (-9) (neg neg number) returns a postive
# * Mite not work rite with all forms of all numbers using $-,+. etc. *

Answer 17

I like to use....

echo "
1
2
3 " | sed -e 's,$, + p,g' | dc 

they will show the sum of each line...

applying over this situation:

ls -ld $(< file.txt) | awk '{print $5}' | sed -e 's,$, + p,g' | dc 

Total is the last value...

Answer 18

Pure bash

total=0; for i in $(cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30); do 
total=$(( $total + $i )); done; echo $total

Answer 19

In my opinion, the simplest solution to this is "expr" unix command:

s=0; 
for i in `cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30`
do
   s=`expr $s + $i`
done
echo $s

Answer 20

sizes=( $(cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30) )
total=$(( $(IFS="+"; echo "${sizes[*]}") ))

Or you could just sum them as you read the sizes

declare -i total=0
while read x; total+=x; done < <( cat files.txt | xargs ls -l | cut -c 23-30 )

If you don't care about bite sizes and blocks is OK, then just

declare -i total=0
while read s junk; total+=s; done < <( cat files.txt | xargs ls -s )

Answer 21

If you have R, you can use:

> ... | Rscript -e 'print(sum(scan("stdin")));'
Read 4 items
[1] 2232320

---

Since I'm comfortable with R, I actually have several aliases for things like this so I can use them in bash without having to remember this syntax. For instance:

alias Rsum=$'Rscript -e \'print(sum(scan("stdin")));\''

which let's me do

> ... | Rsum
Read 4 items
[1] 2232320

Inspiration: Is there a way to get the min, max, median, and average of a list of numbers in a single command?

Answer 22

The most popular answer doesn't work right when the start of the pipe can produce 0 lines, because it ends up outputting nothing rather than 0. You can get correct behavior by always adding 0:

... | (cat && echo 0) | paste -sd+ - | bc

Answer 23

The - is not required for paste. The following will do as long as files.txt contains one or more valid file names:

<files.txt xargs stat -c %s | paste -sd+ | bc

cat is not required to insert 0 in case there is no file. Without a pipe, perhaps more convenient in a script, you could use:

(xargs -a files.txt stat -c %s || echo 0) | paste -sd+ | bc