Output of ls -l

Crashed_Again · 12-11-2003, 03:06 PM

ummm...heres a noob one for ya. I get this for ls -l:

-rw-r--r-- 1 vince vince 3226 Nov 17 08:04 XF86Config
drwxrwxr-x 11 vince vince 4096 Dec 11 08:44 downloads
drwx------ 8 vince vince 4096 Nov 30 20:03 evolution

What is that number to the left of the owner? For downloads its 11, for evolution its 8, and for XF86Config its 1. I've noticed that all the directories have a number greater then one and all the files are one but I can't find what this number means.

Tinkster · 12-11-2003, 03:10 PM

info ls

It's the number of links to that file.

Cheers,
Tink

Crashed_Again · 12-11-2003, 03:14 PM

You da man.

Tinkster · 12-11-2003, 03:38 PM

/me bows to his fellow-LQer

Cheers,
Tink

ac1980 · 12-11-2003, 06:28 PM

> It's the number of links to that file.

Actually, it's the number of hard links to it.
Most notably, for dirs it's usually equal to number of subdirs+2 (due to the .. links, i suppose)