I tried to obtain the size of a directory (containing directories and sub directories) by using the ls command with option l. It seems to work for files (ls -l file name), but if I try to get the size of a directory (for instance, ls -l /home), I get only 4096 bytes, although altogether it is much bigger.
How do I get the size of a directory on the command line?
command line;ls;disk usage
du -sh file_pathExplanationdu command estimates file_path space usageThe options -sh are (from man du):  -s, --summarize         display only a total for each argument  -h, --human-readable         print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)To check more than one directory and see the total, use du -sch:  -c, --total         produce a grand total