Frequently Asked Question

What does ls -l actually tell me on each line?

A single long-format line packs a surprising amount of information. The first ten characters are the file type plus the nine permission bits, type, then owner rwx, group rwx, other rwx. The next column is the link count: for a regular file it is the number of hard links to its inode (usually 1); for a directory it is the number of subdirectories plus two (one for ., one for .. in each child). Then come the owner and group names, the file size in bytes, and the modification timestamp.

The final column is the name. For symlinks it is followed by an arrow and the target. Flags change what you see: -h formats sizes as K/M/G, -t sorts by mtime, -S by size, -i prepends the inode number, and -F appends an indicator character (/ for directory, @ for symlink, * for executable). On most distributions ls is aliased to ls --color=auto so file types are colourised, but the colours are purely cosmetic and decided by LS_COLORS.