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A file's owner is the Unix account that created the file (here student01, me). That account belongs to one or more Unix groups, and the primary group associated with a file is listed in field 4.
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- character 1 describes the file type (
- d for directory
- - (dash) for regular file
- l for symbolic link
- the remaining 9 characters are 3 sets of 3-character designations
- characters 2-4: what the owning user account can do
- characters 5-7: what other members of the associated Unix group can do
- characters 8-19: what other non-group members (everyone) can do
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See the Create, rename, linkto, delete files and Copying files and directories sections of the Some Linux commands page for more information.