lff

A fast and simple recursive 'large file finder', no pipes required.

Usage

Run lff -h/--help or see below.

Usage: lff [OPTIONS] <DIRECTORY>

Arguments:
  <DIRECTORY>  The directory to begin searching in

Options:
  -a, --absolute                     Display absolute paths for files. Automatically true if the supplied directory isn't relative
      --base-ten                     Whether to display file sizes in KB/MB/GB over KiB/MiB/GiB when pretty-printing is enabled
      --exclude-hidden               Exclude hidden files and directories
  -e, --extension <EXTENSION>        Filter files by extension
  -l, --limit <LIMIT>                Return a maximum of this many files
  -m, --min-size-mib <MIN_SIZE_MIB>  The minimum size in MiB for displayed files, e.g. 10 = 10 MiB, 0.1 = 100 KiB [default: 50]
  -n, --name-pattern <NAME_PATTERN>  Filter file names by quoted glob patterns, e.g. '*abc*' will yield 1abc2.txt
  -p, --pretty                       Pretty-prints file sizes
  -s, --sort-method <SORT_METHOD>    How to sort found files [possible values: size, name]
  -h, --help                         Print help
  -V, --version                      Print version

Hint: to see all files in a directory, just pass -m 0.

Install from release

Begin by downloading the latest release for your operating system.

lff is currently published for macOS and Ubuntu, but support can be added for other Linux distros on request. In the interim, other distros should be able to install from source.

With respect to architectures, lff is ARM-based on macOS and x86-based on Ubuntu. ARM-based releases for Ubuntu or other Linux distros can be similarly added on request.

Installation steps:

1. Extract the downloaded tarball using tar -xzvf.
2. A binary will be extracted; copy this to your chosen binaries directory (e.g. /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin).
3. You should now be able to run lff from any terminal.

Build from source

In order to build from source, Rust and Cargo must be installed - rustup is usually the easiest way to do this.

1. Clone the repository.
2. Run cargo build --release.
3. A binary will be generated at target/release/lff; copy this to your chosen binaries directory (e.g. /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin).
4. You should now be able to run lff from any terminal.

Benchmarks

These benchmarks are run using hyperfine, with 10 warmup runs and 20 actual runs each, on an iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021).

All benchmarks are run against the master branch of the Linux source tree.

In these commands, linux-source is the name of the downloaded folder.

These benchmarks compare lff to the GNU du tool and dust, which is a very cool and extended Rust version of du.

100 largest files

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 -s size -l 100 linux-source	113.6 ± 8.0	110.1	147.0	1.00
du -a linux-source | sort -r -n | head -n 100	343.0 ± 9.6	336.1	378.6	3.02 ± 0.23
dust --skip-total -R -F -n 100 -r linux-source	133.7 ± 8.5	129.3	169.0	1.18 ± 0.11

Entire repository sorted by size

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 -s size linux-source	221.4 ± 13.0	210.8	260.7	1.00
du -a linux-source | sort -r -n	412.1 ± 13.4	401.9	453.2	1.86 ± 0.12
dust --skip-total -R -F -n 100000 -r linux-source	862.4 ± 18.5	846.1	906.7	3.89 ± 0.24

Entire repository unsorted

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 linux-source	205.9 ± 14.2	192.8	255.1	1.00
du -a linux-source	242.6 ± 11.1	236.1	280.7	1.18 ± 0.10

NB: dust does not allow for unsorted queries.

First 100 files in repository, unsorted

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 -l 100 linux-source	80.1 ± 7.3	74.1	104.8	10.08 ± 3.91
du -a linux-source | head -n 100	7.9 ± 3.0	5.9	19.1	1.00

NB: dust does not allow for unsorted queries.

Entire repository, no hidden files

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 -s size --exclude-hidden linux-source	223.7 ± 13.5	209.5	255.5	1.00
dust --skip-total -R -F -n 100000 -r -i linux-source	864.8 ± 19.1	843.8	900.1	3.87 ± 0.25

NB: du does not have a flag to ignore hidden files - we could provide a mask, but that would not be fair.

All files larger than 1 MiB, sorted by size

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 1 -s size linux-source	98.7 ± 10.6	91.9	140.4	1.00
dust --skip-total -R -F -n 100000 -r -z 1048576 linux-source	132.5 ± 5.1	126.0	140.4	1.34 ± 0.15

NB: du's -t/--threshold flag doesn't seem to work on macOS...

All files matching the pattern *init.c (glob) or .*init\.c (regex), sorted by size

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
lff -m 0 -s size -n *init.c linux-source	356.2 ± 14.0	327.4	379.8	2.75 ± 0.34
dust --skip-total -R -F -n 100000 -r -e .*init.c linux-source	129.7 ± 15.5	118.7	173.5	1.00

NB: du's -I/--mask flag doesn't seem to work on macOS...