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Development Tools Console Foundations Getting Started with the Console Running Commands

Posted by Brody Chen
Brody Chen
11,252 Points

How does "ls -l" calculate number of files and directories?

In the video "ls -l" gave us "total 8", but in the output of "ls -a" I saw 10 files and directories, excluding "." and "..".

What is going on?

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Do you mean ls -a?

2 Answers

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points
Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

It is because

./ = current dir ../ = back 1 dir

You can see for yourself by running

cd ./ This will do nothing and keep you in the same

cd ../ This will take you back a directory

It is a little easier to understand if you run ll because it will show the slash after the dot(s).

It has nothing to do with the bash files as the previous poster mentioned because same thing will happen even without bash.

Brody Chen
Brody Chen
11,252 Points

Thanks for the answer, Sue. However, your answer doesn't solve my question.

Maybe I should make my question more clear.

Here is the output of ls -a:

.    .bash_history  .bashrc  documents  .profile  .sudo_as_admin_successful
..   .bash_logout   .cache   hello.txt  .ssh      .viminfo

If you include . and .., there are 12 files and directories.

But the output of ls -l showed total 8

Now the question is: which 4 of 12 were not counted in?

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points
Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

You see more with -a because it shows all files including hidden.

-a means all including hidden files starting with a dot. Dot files do not show on default.

ls and ls -l are the same thing. The -l just makes it visually show a long output.

. and .. are what I explained above.

If you want further details then just use man. man is short for manual in linux.

Type in man ls and q when you want to exit.

Brody Chen
Brody Chen
11,252 Points

Thanks, Sue. man helps!

This is what I found:

-l      (The lowercase letter ``ell''.)  List in long format.  (See
        below.)  If the output is to a terminal, a total sum for all the
        file sizes is output on a line before the long listing.

So the answer is that 8 in total 8 is the "total sum for all the files sizes" instead of the number of files and directories.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Thanks for explaining! :)

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points
Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Here's what I think is causing the Console to say "total 8" (IT MAY NOT BE RIGHT fyi):

There's two directories that is only for the Console (the ones that start with .bash_), and the Console doesn't count those in the total.

Just guessing!

Might be right :)

Good luck! ~alex

Brody Chen
Brody Chen
11,252 Points

Thanks for your help, Alex! I think that might be right.

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points
Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

This shows regardless of bash and is unrelated to bash. Check my answer.

Brody Chen
Brody Chen
11,252 Points

Hi, Alex. I think I found the answer! Check out my latest comment in Sue's post.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Cool! I'm still kinda new to this Console stuff, so it's nice to know more things :)

Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points
Sue Dough
Sue Dough
35,800 Points

Yeah sure thing. The console is fun. If you ever want to dive deep into a certain command then use the man page.

by typing

man PROGRAM_NAME_GOES_HERE