ls command

Hey guys. This is in reference to the ls -l command output. Can someone tell me what the the line total # means?

Example:

$ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 username group 4096 Sep 2 19:25 temp2

Thanks!

<total 4> refers to the amount of blocks used by the files on the hard drive. Each block is usually either 512 or 1024 characters.

Now theres something I didn't know

Thanks a bunch.

Now there's something that has been taunting me for a long time ....Berzerker, thanks for the answer!

Welcome... The info was taken from the book "Unix Programming Environment" written by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike (translated in Greek ).
It's a good book for reference...