Total in ls -la

[Fajar Priyanto]

Hello guys,
I'm curious when we do 'ls -la', what does 'total' mean? Is it the amount of 
directory, files, or else?

Example:
pwd
/tmp/testls/dir1

ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 fajar users 4096 2006-11-06 11:12 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 fajar users 4096 2006-11-06 11:12 ..

What 'total 8' stands for?
Thank you very much.
-- 
Fajar Priyanto | Reg'd Linux User #327841 | Linux tutorial 
http://linux2.arinet.org
11:13am up 3:24, 2.6.16.13-4-default GNU/Linux 
Let's use OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org
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