You just need a better frontend. A distribution of file sizes < 100kB in my home directory: ls -l \ | awk '$5 < 100000 {print $5

You just need a better frontend. A distribution of file sizes < 100kB in my home directory: ls -l \ | awk '$5 < 100000 {print $5}' \ | feedgnuplot \ --histo 0 \ --binwidth 5000 \ --xlabel 'File size (bytes)' \ --ylabel Frequency \ --terminal 'dumb 120 40' \ --unset grid 45 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | * * + + + + + + + | | * * | | * * | 40 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 35 |*** * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 30 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 25 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | 20 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 15 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 10 |-+* * +-| | * * | | * * | | * * | 5 |-+* ******** +-| | * * * ******** | | * * ******** ********************** ******** * | | * * + * * + * * + * ******* * + * + + ******** | 0 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 File size (bytes) Usually you want graphical output, but it does fine in ascii