BigItems - Find Your Biggest Data Sins

BigItems is a small Bash utility that lists the largest files and directories in a given location. It is useful for quickly discovering what is consuming disk space.

Prerequisites

• Bash
• GNU core utilities (du, find, sort, head, numfmt)
• Tested on Linux and macOS

Installation

Clone this repository and make the script executable:

git clone <repo-url>
cd bigdata-sins
chmod +x bigitems.sh

Usage

./bigitems.sh [--files | --dirs | --both] [--top N] [target_directory]

Options

• --files – show the largest files only
• --dirs – show the largest directories only
• --both – show both files and directories (default)
• --top N – number of results to display (default: 10)
• target_directory – directory to analyse (defaults to current directory)
• --help – display help

Examples

1. Find the 5 largest files in a directory

./bigitems.sh --files --top 5 /path/to/dir

2. Show the largest directories under /var/log

./bigitems.sh --dirs --top 10 /var/log

3. Display both files and directories in the current directory

./bigitems.sh

Tips

Use this script periodically to locate and clean up large items before backups or when sharing disk space with others.