The Linux ls command comes with these options.    --block-size=SIZE          scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g., '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of  1,048,576  bytes;  see          SIZE format below   -l     use a long listing format          list subdirectories recursively   -s, --size          print the allocated size of each file, in blocksI presume that ls -l is the actual file size and ls -s --block-size=1 is the amount of disk space allocated to storing the file. (In this case 991232 = 968x1024 = 968K.)$ ls -s --block-size=1  summary.pdf 991232 summary.pdf$ ls -l summary.pdf -rwxrwx---. 1 chris chris 989838 May  1  2015 summary.pdfIs there an to get the file size in bytes without the additional information in long listing format?
ls and actual file size without using 'long listing format'
files;ls
You can use stat with a custom format.stat -c'%s' summary.pdf will output the actual file size in bytes. If you want allocated blocks, use %b for the number of blocks allocated and %B for the block size of each block in bytes.This also works with wildcards and an additional %n for the file name. See the man page for more format options.