This question already has an answer here:
On a server when I type in
ls -al I get a list of the directories
-bash-3.2$ ls -al total 12 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Feb 13 2011 . drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 11 2011 .. drwxr-xr-x 55 torg torg 4096 May 15 05:40 stuff
However the total tells me that there should be 12 directories present. Why is this? I was under the impression that the
-a flag revealed all directories. Is there some more effective way of seeing all directories, or is the total referring to something else?