Subject: df output difficult to parse

From: Valerio Pachera <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:43:22 +0200

Package: GNU coreutils
Version: 8.5

Severity: wishlist

Description:
I'm trying to parse di output of df command to check how much free
space is left on my disks.
I need to check this by a script.
The problem is that, when the device name is long, we get a new line
in the output (see example below).
It's difficult then have data relate with the device name or mount
poiunt usign grep and awk.

Proposed Solution:
simply add an option to not wrap the output text.

File system           Dim. Usati Disp. Uso% Montato su
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-testing
                      9,2G  3,3G  5,5G  38% /
tmpfs                 1,5G     0  1,5G   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                   10M  224K  9,8M   3% /dev
tmpfs                 1,5G   12K  1,5G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-dati
                      120G   77G   38G  68% /mnt/dati
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-opt
                      5,0G  963M  3,8G  21% /opt
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-var
                      5,0G  974M  3,8G  21% /var
fileserver:/pubblica  1,4T  579G  722G  45% /media/pubblica
proxy:/mnt/dati/ftp   9,8G  7,3G  2,0G  79% /media/ftp
/dev/sdb1             977M  852M  125M  88% /media/VALERIO

###### trying to extract used % ######

$ df -h /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-dati  | awk '{print $4}'
Usati

68%

$ df -h /dev/sdb1 | awk '{print $4}' | tr -d %
Usati
125M

Ad you can see, the colum 4 is not the same (used% in the first case,
Total space in the second).

Thank you