How much disk space does a list of files use

Question

How can I find how much disk does a list of files uses? I'm looking for a variation of

du -s *.sql

I want to see only the grand total, and with the command above, it always shows a line for each file.

Answer 1

I found no way to make du report just the total of a set of files, without the files itself.

You can use tail to cut the last line (the total) from the output of du:

du -c *.sql | tail -n 1

Answer 2

What doesn't work from your example? Do you want a sum? man du shows that the -c argument provides a sum of usage:

du -sc *.sql

You may also like the -h or -k arguments.

Answer 3

Your question is very ambiguous but I suspect you are looking for the -c flag to produce a total.

du -c *.sql

Answer 4

cat *.sql | wc -c

Answer is in bytes.