How many bytes is a folder?

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I have no idea what sub-forum this should have gone on, though I really want to know how many bytes a folder is.

[mikat]

what os?

i know that you can do "du -sh pathtofolder" on mac (sure) & linux (pretty sure) 

[Guest]

Software. And if we're going to talk in terms of that, it depends. Mainly called "directories". 

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1 minute ago, mikat said:

what os?

It would be different depending on the OS?

I'd like to know for OSX 1.11, Windows 10, and Linux Mint.

[Raffy98]

Usually a empty folder is 0 bytes because you're just creating a container that has nothing in it. (at least Windows works that way)

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1 minute ago, IAmLamp said:

Software. And if we're going to talk in terms of that, it depends. Mainly called "directories". 

Though don't I have to decide between: OS, Programming, and Programming, Apps, and Websites?

[LukeTim]

What do you mean "how many bytes is a folder"?

A folder takes no storage space on the disk. It is purely a file system abstraction. It exists as a pointer/reference in the file system's tree... It takes up some space in the file system tables/tree because it has a name, some security/permissions information and some other metadata. Other than that it doesn't take up space in the same sense that a file does. It doesn't really have a size...

[typographie]

I'm making some assumptions here, but I don't think a folder itself is "data." It's just a way for the OS to organize and present things to you. It isn't actually a thing on the disk.

 

Edit: Yeah, what LukeTim said!

[WkdPaul]

1 hour ago, LukeTim said:

*snip*

 It doesn't really have a size...

Like you said, it takes space in the MFT (NTFS) so while it doesn't take disk space in the same sense that a file would, the name and properties of each and every folder do take some space on the disk but it's usually so small that it's not taken into account!

 

If someone is interested to see roughly the size of their NTFS MFT, NTFSinfo is a good tool, it's usually between 150 to 200 MB.

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20 hours ago, LukeTim said:

What do you mean "how many bytes is a folder"?

A folder takes no storage space on the disk. It is purely a file system abstraction. It exists as a pointer/reference in the file system's tree... It takes up some space in the file system tables/tree because it has a name, some security/permissions information and some other metadata. Other than that it doesn't take up space in the same sense that a file does. It doesn't really have a size...

So it would take some space in the file system tree for the date modified and name?