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Development Tools Console Foundations Getting Started with the Console Running Commands

Posted by Carlos Vieira
Carlos Vieira
Courses Plus Student 1,345 Points

ls -l and ls-a give Total:0

Having or not hidden files/directories the total on the top of the list displays always 0 for whatever number of files I have in the current directory. I am using mac's terminal. What does it mean? Is this normal?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,275 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,275 Points

I wouldn't expect to see a "total" line from the command "ls -a". But I would for "ls -l", and I would not expect to see 0 shown for a non-empty directory.

From "man 1 ls" on Mac OS X 10.6.7, specifically the section titled "The Long Format":

,,, for each directory whose contents are displayed, the total number of 512-byte blocks used by the files in the directory is displayed on a line by itself, immediately before the information for the files in the directory.

Carlos Vieira
Carlos Vieira
Courses Plus Student 1,345 Points

Thank you:) Strange, now I tried again and with ls -l gave me in fact the correct total number. Yes, you are right with ls -a there is no total to display.