my $dir = "//home//schmoe//somedir";
my $dirsize = -s $dir || die "can't stat dir $dir: $!";

##</code><code>##

`du -ks`

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

use File::Find;
@ARGV = ('.') unless @ARGV;
my $sum = 0;
find sub { $sum += -s }, @ARGV;
print "@ARGV contains $sum bytes\n";