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.