numfmt: Reformat numbersnumfmt reads numbers in various representations and reformats them
as requested. The most common usage is converting numbers to/from human
representation (e.g. ‘4G’ → ‘4,000,000,000’).
numfmt [option]… [number]
numfmt converts each number on the command-line according to the
specified options (see below). If no numbers are given, it reads numbers
from standard input. numfmt can optionally extract numbers from
specific columns, maintaining proper line padding and alignment.
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.
See --invalid for additional information regarding exit status.
The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.
Print (to standard error) warning messages about possible erroneous usage.
Use the character d as input field separator (default: whitespace). Using non-default delimiter turns off automatic padding.
Convert the number in input field fields (default: 1).
fields supports cut style field ranges:
N N'th field, counted from 1 N- from N'th field, to end of line N-M from N'th to M'th field (inclusive) -M from first to M'th field (inclusive) - all fields
Use printf-style floating FORMAT string. The format string must contain one ‘%f’ directive, optionally with ‘'’, ‘-’, ‘0’, width or precision modifiers. The ‘'’ modifier will enable --grouping, the ‘-’ modifier will enable left-aligned --padding and the width modifier will enable right-aligned --padding. The ‘0’ width modifier (without the ‘-’ modifier) will generate leading zeros on the number, up to the specified width. A precision specification like ‘%.1f’ will override the precision determined from the input data or set due to --to option auto scaling.
Auto-scales input numbers according to unit. See UNITS below. The default is no scaling, meaning suffixes (e.g. ‘M’, ‘G’) will trigger an error.
Specify the input unit size (instead of the default 1). Use this option when the input numbers represent other units (e.g. if the input number ‘10’ represents 10 units of 512 bytes, use ‘--from-unit=512’). Suffixes are handled as with ‘--from=auto’.
Group digits in output numbers according to the current locale’s grouping rules (e.g Thousands Separator character, commonly ‘.’ (dot) or ‘,’ comma). This option has no effect in ‘POSIX/C’ locale.
Print the first n (default: 1) lines without any conversion.
The default action on input errors is to exit immediately with status code 2. --invalid=‘abort’ explicitly specifies this default mode. With a mode of ‘fail’, print a warning for each conversion error, and exit with status 2. With a mode of ‘warn’, exit with status 0, even in the presence of conversion errors, and with a mode of ‘ignore’ do not even print diagnostics.
Pad the output numbers to n characters, by adding spaces. If n is a positive number, numbers will be right-aligned. If n is a negative number, numbers will be left-aligned. By default, numbers are automatically aligned based on the input line’s width (only with the default delimiter).
When converting number representations, round the number according to method, which can be ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘from-zero’ (the default), ‘towards-zero’, ‘nearest’.
Add ‘SUFFIX’ to the output numbers, and accept optional ‘SUFFIX’ in input numbers.
Auto-scales output numbers according to unit. See Units below. The default is no scaling, meaning all the digits of the number are printed.
Specify the output unit size (instead of the default 1). Use this option when the output numbers represent other units (e.g. to represent ‘4,000,000’ bytes in blocks of 1kB, use ‘--to=si --to-unit=1000’). Suffixes are handled as with ‘--from=auto’.
Delimit items with a zero byte rather than a newline (ASCII LF). I.e., treat input as items separated by ASCII NUL and terminate output items with ASCII NUL. This option can be useful in conjunction with ‘perl -0’ or ‘find -print0’ and ‘xargs -0’ which do the same in order to reliably handle arbitrary file names (even those containing blanks or other special characters). With -z the newline character is treated as a field separator.
The following are the possible unit options with --from=UNITS and --to=UNITS:
No scaling is performed. For input numbers, no suffixes are accepted, and any trailing characters following the number will trigger an error. For output numbers, all digits of the numbers will be printed.
Auto-scale numbers according to the International System of Units (SI) standard. For input numbers, accept one of the following suffixes. For output numbers, values larger than 1000 will be rounded, and printed with one of the following suffixes:
‘K’ => 1000^1 = 10^3 (Kilo) (uppercase accepted on input)
‘k’ => 1000^1 = 10^3 (Kilo) (lowercase used on output)
‘M’ => 1000^2 = 10^6 (Mega)
‘G’ => 1000^3 = 10^9 (Giga)
‘T’ => 1000^4 = 10^{12} (Tera)
‘P’ => 1000^5 = 10^{15} (Peta)
‘E’ => 1000^6 = 10^{18} (Exa)
‘Z’ => 1000^7 = 10^{21} (Zetta)
‘Y’ => 1000^8 = 10^{24} (Yotta)
‘R’ => 1000^9 = 10^{27} (Ronna)
‘Q’ => 1000^{10} = 10^{30} (Quetta)
Auto-scale numbers according to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard. For input numbers, accept one of the following suffixes. For output numbers, values larger than 1024 will be rounded, and printed with one of the following suffixes:
‘K’ => 1024^1 = 2^{10} (Kibi) (uppercase used on output)
‘k’ => 1024^1 = 2^{10} (Kibi) (lowercase accepted on input)
‘M’ => 1024^2 = 2^{20} (Mebi)
‘G’ => 1024^3 = 2^{30} (Gibi)
‘T’ => 1024^4 = 2^{40} (Tebi)
‘P’ => 1024^5 = 2^{50} (Pebi)
‘E’ => 1024^6 = 2^{60} (Exbi)
‘Z’ => 1024^7 = 2^{70} (Zebi)
‘Y’ => 1024^8 = 2^{80} (Yobi)
‘R’ => 1024^9 = 2^{90} (Robi)
‘Q’ => 1024^{10} = 2^{100} (Quebi)
The iec option uses a single letter suffix (e.g. ‘G’), which is not fully standard, as the iec standard recommends a two-letter symbol (e.g ‘Gi’) – but in practice, this method is common. Compare with the iec-i option.
Auto-scale numbers according to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard. For input numbers, accept one of the following suffixes. For output numbers, values larger than 1024 will be rounded, and printed with one of the following suffixes:
‘Ki’ => 1024^1 = 2^{10} (Kibi) (uppercase used on output)
‘ki’ => 1024^1 = 2^{10} (Kibi) (lowercase accepted on input)
‘Mi’ => 1024^2 = 2^{20} (Mebi)
‘Gi’ => 1024^3 = 2^{30} (Gibi)
‘Ti’ => 1024^4 = 2^{40} (Tebi)
‘Pi’ => 1024^5 = 2^{50} (Pebi)
‘Ei’ => 1024^6 = 2^{60} (Exbi)
‘Zi’ => 1024^7 = 2^{70} (Zebi)
‘Yi’ => 1024^8 = 2^{80} (Yobi)
‘Ri’ => 1024^9 = 2^{90} (Robi)
‘Qi’ => 1024^{10} = 2^{100} (Quebi)
The iec-i option uses a two-letter suffix symbol (e.g. ‘Gi’), as the iec standard recommends, but this is not always common in practice. Compare with the iec option.
‘auto’ can only be used with --from. With this method, numbers with single-letter suffixes like ‘K’ suffixes are interpreted as SI values, and numbers with two-letter suffixes like ‘Ki’ are interpreted as IEC values.
numfmtConverting a single number from/to human representation:
$ numfmt --to=si 500000 500k $ numfmt --to=iec 500000 489K $ numfmt --to=iec-i 500000 489Ki $ numfmt --from=si 1M 1000000 $ numfmt --from=iec 1M 1048576 # with '--from=auto', M=Mega, Mi=Mebi $ numfmt --from=auto 1M 1000000 $ numfmt --from=auto 1Mi 1048576
Converting from ‘SI’ to ‘IEC’ scales (e.g. when a drive’s capacity is advertised as ‘1TB’, while checking the drive’s capacity gives lower values):
$ numfmt --from=si --to=iec 1T 932G
With both input and output scales specified, the largest defined prefixes are supported:
$ numfmt --from=si --to=iec-i 2000R 1.6Qi
Converting a single field from an input file / piped input (these contrived
examples are for demonstration purposes only, as both ls and
df support the --human-readable option to
output sizes in human-readable format):
# Third field (file size) will be shown in SI representation $ ls -log | numfmt --field 3 --header --to=si | head -n4 -rw-r--r-- 1 94k Aug 23 2011 ABOUT-NLS -rw-r--r-- 1 3.7k Jan 7 16:15 AUTHORS -rw-r--r-- 1 36k Jun 1 2011 COPYING -rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jan 7 15:15 ChangeLog # Second field (size) will be shown in IEC representation $ df --block-size=1 | numfmt --field 2 --header --to=iec | head -n4 File system 1B-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 132G 104741408 26554036 80% / tmpfs 794M 7580 804960 1% /run/shm /dev/sdb1 694G 651424756 46074696 94% /home
Output can be tweaked using --padding or --format:
# Pad to 10 characters, right-aligned
$ du -s * | numfmt --to=si --padding=10
2.5k config.log
108 config.status
1.7k configure
20 configure.ac
# Pad to 10 characters, left-aligned
$ du -s * | numfmt --to=si --padding=-10
2.5k config.log
108 config.status
1.7k configure
20 configure.ac
# Pad to 10 characters, left-aligned, using 'format'
$ du -s * | numfmt --to=si --format="%10f"
2.5k config.log
108 config.status
1.7k configure
20 configure.ac
# Pad to 10 characters, left-aligned, using 'format'
$ du -s * | numfmt --to=si --padding="%-10f"
2.5k config.log
108 config.status
1.7k configure
20 configure.ac
With locales that support grouping digits, using --grouping or --format enables grouping. In ‘POSIX’ locale, grouping is silently ignored:
$ LC_ALL=C numfmt --from=iec --grouping 2G 2147483648 $ LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 numfmt --from=iec --grouping 2G 2,147,483,648 $ LC_ALL=ta_IN numfmt --from=iec --grouping 2G 2,14,74,83,648 $ LC_ALL=C numfmt --from=iec --format="==%'15f==" 2G == 2147483648== $ LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 numfmt --from=iec --format="==%'15f==" 2G == 2,147,483,648== $ LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 numfmt --from=iec --format="==%'-15f==" 2G ==2,147,483,648 == $ LC_ALL=ta_IN numfmt --from=iec --format="==%'15f==" 2G == 2,14,74,83,648==