Using ls to list directories and their total sizes

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?

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.

Try something like:

du -sh *

short version of:

du --summarize --human-readable *

Explanation:

du: Disk Usage

-s: Display a summary for each specified file. (Equivalent to -d 0)

-h: "Human-readable" output. Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kibibyte (KiB), Mebibyte (MiB), Gibibyte (GiB), Tebibyte (TiB) and Pebibyte (PiB). (BASE2)

du -sk * | sort -n will sort the folders by size. Helpful when looking to clear space..

or du -sh * | sort -h used when human-readable mode

du -sh * | sort -h

This will be displayed in human readable format.

To list the largest directories from the current directory in human readable format:

du -sh * | sort -hr

A better way to restrict number of rows can be

du -sh * | sort -hr | head -n10

Where you can increase the suffix of -n flag to restrict the number of rows listed

Sample:

[~]$ du -sh * | sort -hr
48M app
11M lib
6.7M    Vendor
1.1M    composer.phar
488K    phpcs.phar
488K    phpcbf.phar
72K doc
16K nbproject
8.0K    composer.lock
4.0K    README.md

It makes it more convenient to read :)