Find all zero-byte files in directory and subdirectories

Question

How can I find all zero-byte files in a directory and its subdirectories?

I have done this:

#!/bin/bash
lns=`vdir -R *.* $dir| awk '{print $8"\t"$5}'`
temp=""
for file in $lns; do
    if test $file = "0"; then
        printf $temp"\t"$file"\n"
    fi
    temp=$file
done

But, I only get results in the current directory, not subdirs, and if any file name contains a space then I get only first word followed by tab

Question also posted on [unix&linux](http://superuser.com/q/575235/4714) - please don't post the same question in multiple places. — glenn jackman, Mar 29 '13 at 14:34
next time im not repeate like this due to problem in my browser in with stackoverflow i posted in superuser but now the problem fixed by clearing history cookies and catche in ie so i asked again here — Civa, Mar 29 '13 at 15:57

William Pursell · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-09T11:11:36.320

185

To print the names of all files in and below $dir of size 0:

find "$dir" -size 0

Note that not all implementations of find will produce output by default, so you may need to do:

find "$dir" -size 0 -print

Two comments on the final loop in the question:

Rather than iterating over every other word in a string and seeing if the alternate values are zero, you can partially eliminate the issue you're having with whitespace by iterating over lines. eg:

printf '1 f1\n0 f 2\n10 f3\n' | while read size path; do
    test "$size" -eq 0 && echo "$path"; done

Note that this will fail in your case if any of the paths output by ls contain newlines, and this reinforces 2 points: don't parse ls, and have a sane naming policy that doesn't allow whitespace in paths.

Secondly, to output the data from the loop, there is no need to store the output in a variable just to echo it. If you simply let the loop write its output to stdout, you accomplish the same thing but avoid storing it.

edited Jan 09 '20 at 11:11

answered Mar 29 '13 at 12:58

William Pursell

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can i filter a directory other than *.xml – Civa Mar 29 '13 at 13:23
2

There's also a convenient `-empty` option. – Wesley Baugh Jul 26 '17 at 23:39
@WesleyBaugh with -empty option you get also directories with zero files inside – Igor Scabini Sep 20 '17 at 14:13
1

@IgorScabini If you want to limit to files you can do so with `-type f`. – Wesley Baugh Sep 20 '17 at 14:44
Lovely! Simple and to the point. Man, I don't use this `find` command enough. I really have to get over my fear of figuring it out. So useful. – racl101 Dec 21 '17 at 21:28

score 36 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '16 at 08:25

36

As addition to the answers above:

If you would like to delete those files

find $dir -size 0 -type f -delete

answered Mar 10 '16 at 08:25

LinuxLuigi

574
5
13

1

its not necessary to delete all the file of size 0 all the time. – Raghvendra Jan 16 '17 at 07:39
then how to delete a file within a folder with size 0 – Raghvendra Jan 16 '17 at 07:40
`-exec /bin/rm {} \;` or `-exec /bin/rm {} +` will work on non-GNU `find` implementations as well, which does not support the non-standard extension `-delete` – Gert van den Berg May 15 '18 at 14:49

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '13 at 15:29

9

No, you don't have to bother grep.

find $dir -size 0 ! -name "*.xml"

answered Mar 30 '13 at 15:29

Batcher

177
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Mike Q · Answer 4 · 2019-06-06T22:39:56.030

4

Bash 4+ tested - This is the correct way to search for size 0:

find /path/to/dir -size 0 -type f -name "*.xml"

Search for multiple file extensions of size 0:

find /path/to/dir -size 0 -type f \( -iname \*.css -o -iname \*.js \)

Note: If you removed the $ ... $ the results would be all of the files that meet this requirement hence ignoring the size 0.

edited Jun 06 '19 at 22:39

answered Sep 28 '16 at 19:59

Mike Q

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`-iname` is not portable to some non-GNU implementations of `find` See [here for a list of standard](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/find.html) options – Gert van den Berg May 15 '18 at 14:45

Find all zero-byte files in directory and subdirectories

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