You can read about it with the info pages of ls. The man page directs you to run the command
info coreutils 'ls invocation' for more information.
Running the command brings up section 10.1 of the coreutils documentation. Press the down arrow to scroll through the info and move to the next subsection. The info you want is in 10.1.2. The text from that section regarding the '-l' or 'long' directory listing:
Code:
`-l'
`--format=long'
`--format=verbose'
In addition to the name of each file, print the file type, file
mode bits, number of hard links, owner name, group name, size, and
timestamp (*note Formatting file timestamps::), normally the
modification time. Print question marks for information that
cannot be determined.
There is more information regarding the long listing format, and I'm sure it would address any followups you might have.
