Using ls to list directories and their total sizes?

Question

Is it possible to use `ls` in Unix to list the total size of a sub-directory and all its contents as opposed to the usual 4K that (I assume) is just the directory file itself? I.E. total 12K drwxrwxr-x 6 *** *** 4.0K 2009-06-19 10:10 branches drwxrwxr-x 13 *** *** 4.0K 2009-06-19 10:52 tags drwxrwxr-x 16 *** *** 4.0K 2009-06-19 10:02 trunk After scouring the man pages I'm coming up empty.

Answer 1

ls -l --block-size=M

Answer 2

try using "ncdu"

Answer 3

You want the du command for that. To get a grand total size in bytes of the current directory, try:

$ du -chs

88G .

88G total

See man du for more info.