what does terminal command: ls -l show?

Question

I know that it outputs the \"long\" version but what do each of the sections mean?

On my mac, when I type in

ls -l /Users 

I ge

Answer 1

The option '-l' tells the command to use a long list format. It gives back several columns wich correspond to:

• Permissions
• Number of hardlinks
• File owner
• File group
• File size
• Modification time
• Filename

The first letter in the permissions column show the file's type. A 'd' means a directory and a '-' means a normal file (there are other characters, but those are the basic ones). The next nine characters are divided into 3 groups, each one a permission. Each letter in a group correspond to the read, write and execute permission, and each group correspond to the owner of the file, the group of the file and then for everyone else.

• [ File type ][ Owner permissions ][ Group permissions ][ Everyone permissions ]

The characters can be one of four options:

• r = read permission
• w = write permission
• x = execute permission
• - = no permission

Finally, the "+" at the end means some extended permissions.