Using ls
 

When using ls -l, what is the total that is given at the top? It doesn't appear to correspond with the number of files I see.

What option can you use to display the number of files in a directory?

Take a look at man ls.

Okay, I read that but still don't know what the total below means. Man page also doess not state which option will report total files.

ls -l

total 96
drwx------ 4 ekridaka students 4096 Jul 6 01:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jun 30 17:14 ..

That value is actually explained in
info coreutils ls

But the OP could have found that themselves if they
had been curious enough and read the entire man-
page themselves, and followed the advice in the
SEE ALSO section of man.

In brief, the total gives the total number of BLOCKS
used by the directory.


Cheers,
Tink

A neat trick that ls does is columnarise output if it's going to a terminal, otherwise it prints one filename per line. The -1 flag replicates this behaviour to a terminal. To replicate the terminal behaviour to a non-terminal device, use -C.