Directing Directory Size Calculation with Python

To gauge the space occupancy of a directory, Python offers several approaches. Below we delve into an efficient and comprehensive solution:

import os

def directory_size(start_path):
    total_size = 0

    for root, directories, files in os.walk(start_path):
        for file in files:
            file_path = os.path.join(root, file)
            if not os.path.islink(file_path):
                total_size  = os.path.getsize(file_path)

    return total_size

Advantages of this Solution:

• Recursively traverses all subdirectories, ensuring comprehensive size calculation.
• Excludes symbolic links, which may point to files outside the directory.
• Calculates size in bytes, the fundamental unit of storage.

Additional Considerations:

• To format the size in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB), use round(total_size / 1024 ** 2, 2) for MB or round(total_size / 1024 ** 3, 2) for GB.
• To exclude hidden files, add if file[0] != '.' before total_size = os.path.getsize(file_path) within the loop.