What does total no. of files in ls -lrt o/p means?


 
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# 1  
Old 01-17-2013
What does total no. of files in ls -lrt o/p means?

when we fire ls -lrt command we see o/p as

Code:
 
total 16
drwx------   9 root     root        8192 May  8  2002 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         512 Jun 14  2002 TT_DB
drwxrwxr-x   2 root      root      512 Jul 31  2002 mail

here total no. of files is always greater than actual no. of files.
can someone tell why is this.

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 01-17-2013 at 06:09 AM.. Reason: quote tags => code tags
# 2  
Old 01-17-2013
This is from the Linux info pages:

Quote:
For each directory that is listed, preface the files with a line
`total BLOCKS', where BLOCKS is the total disk allocation for all
files in that directory. The block size currently defaults to 1024
bytes, but this can be overridden (*note Block size::). The
BLOCKS computed counts each hard link separately; this is arguably
a deficiency.

Last edited by radoulov; 01-17-2013 at 06:43 AM..
# 3  
Old 01-17-2013
Try the -s option and sum up the first column...
This User Gave Thanks to RudiC For This Post:
# 4  
Old 01-17-2013
thanks a lot guys, got it that it is total no. of blocks the files occupy in that directory , i thought them to be no. of files or something used below code to find the total no. of bytes
Code:
sum=0 ; 
b=1;
n=`ls -lsrt |  awk -F " " '{print $1}' | wc -l`
n=$(($n-$b));
echo $n;
ls -lsrt |  awk -F " " '{print $1}' | tail -$n | while read x
 do sum=$(($sum+$x))
 done;
 echo $sum;


Last edited by Scott; 01-17-2013 at 07:27 AM.. Reason: Code tags, please...
# 5  
Old 01-18-2013
Not sure I understand what you want to achieve.
The sum you output is the total sum of blocks that ls outputs anyhow. This could be done with a oneliner as well:
Code:
$ ls -s1|awk 'NR==1{next} {sum+=$1} END {print sum}'

If you want total bytes instead, use column 5, or, use the stat command if available on your system.
 
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