bug#61884: add an option to du that allows to control which file types are counted

[Pádraig Brady]

On 01/03/2023 03:18, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Hey.
>
> When I want to count the nominal sizes of the (usually regular) files
> in a directory I do something like:
>
> du --apparent-size --block-size=1
>
> This however also counts in the sizes of the directories themselves
> (and I guess also of symlinks, etc.).
>
>
> The "problem" with that is in particular, that for the exact same
> dir/file structure, the results differ e.g. between ext4 and btrfs,
> because of different sizes for the directories (themselves).
>
> It would be nice if there was a option that allowed to select which
> file types are counted.
>
>
> Yes I know that one can do something like:
> find . -type f -print0  |  du --apparent-size -l -c -s --block-size=1 
> --files0-from=- | tail -n
>
> But that's rather cumbersome... also I cannot do something like
> du path1 path2 path3
> and get totals for each and a grand summary.
>
> And even if I make an shell alias out of this, I cannot do bash completion on 
> it.

There are many possible filtering options,
which are probably best left to `find` (as per your example).
This was also mentioned previously at:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2013-04/msg00043.html

cheers,
Pádraig