Find largest file in a directory using Bash
Quick Overview
This question evaluates a candidate's proficiency with shell scripting and Unix command-line concepts, including recursive file-system traversal, recognizing regular files versus other file types, handling filenames with whitespace, and extracting size metadata.
Intuit
Feb 11, 2026, 12:00 AM
Software Engineer
Take-home Project
Software Engineering Fundamentals
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Write a Bash command (or short script) that, given a directory path, returns the largest regular file under that directory.
Requirements:
- Search recursively under the directory.
- Output the file path (and ideally the size as well).
- Handle file names that may contain spaces.
Example:
-
Input:
/var/log -
Output: something like
1234567 /var/log/biggest.log
Solution
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