19

I am listing hidden files:

ls -ld .?*

And I get an output:

drwxrwxr-x  3 kisco kisco   4096 Jun 18 19:41 .shutter
drwx------  6 kisco kisco   4096 Jun 17 11:07 .Skype
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco  12288 Jun 16 17:47 .swm
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco 360448 May 25 22:04 .swn
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco  12288 May  9 21:42 .swo
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco  12288 May  7 21:35 .swp
drwx------  4 kisco kisco   4096 Jun  9 14:45 .thunderbird
-rw-rw-r--  1 kisco kisco   4761 Feb 17  2013 .tmux.conf
lrwxrwxrwx  1 kisco kisco     33 Jun 19 08:25 .vim -> /home/kisco/.haskell-vim-now/.vim
drwxrwxr-x  4 kisco kisco   4096 Jun 17 19:40 .vim.20150619_082532
drwxrwxr-x 12 kisco kisco   4096 Jun 16 13:49 .vim_bak
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco   8214 Jun 19 12:19 .viminfo
lrwxrwxrwx  1 kisco kisco     35 Jun 19 08:25 .vimrc -> /home/kisco/.haskell-vim-now/.vimrc
-rw-rw-r--  1 kisco kisco  10673 Jun 18 19:51 .vimrc~
-rw-rw-r--  1 kisco kisco  10673 Jun 18 19:52 .vimrc.20150619_082532
-rw-r--r--  1 kisco kisco  20480 Jun 16 17:48 .vimrc.swo
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco  12288 Jun  5 10:50 .vimscript.R.swp
drwx------  2 kisco kisco   4096 Mar 16 13:19 .vnc
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco     50 Jun 19 11:14 .Xauthority
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco      0 May 15 17:39 .xsel.log
-rw-rw-r--  1 kisco kisco     14 Mar 16 13:23 .xsession
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco    711 Jun 19 11:14 .xsession-errors
-rw-------  1 kisco kisco   1486 Jun 19 10:14 .xsession-errors.old

What do these mean? ->

enter image description here

Alex Gordon
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    That means a **symbolic link** – anubhava Jun 19 '15 at 17:32
  • Take a look at `man ln`. – Cyrus Jun 19 '15 at 17:32
  • I usually don't like answers/comments in the style: RTFM, but in this case, sure the `man ls`, press `/` entering `->` - would be much-much faster, as "taking a screenshot", edit arrows into it, post to SO... ;) – clt60 Jun 19 '15 at 17:57
  • @jm666: On linux, that just gives you `Pattern not found` -- not terribly useful, but maybe indicative of a problem with the man page... – Chris Dodd Jun 19 '15 at 21:05
  • @ChrisDodd hm. for me returns a line: `If the file is a symbolic link, the pathname of the linked-to file is preceded by "->". ` – clt60 Jun 20 '15 at 00:19
  • i've come to understand that people either have "RTFM" as a way of dealing with people, or they take the high road and try to be more helpful; and, though easily impatient with newbies, waxing helpful vs punitive is smarter in open-source communities, imo. – dcparham May 04 '17 at 19:37

1 Answers1

24

It means the file in question is a symbolic link and the path after the -> is the target of the symbolic link

Chris Dodd
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