ls -l is not behaving as I expect

[Colin Law]

On 3 February 2011 09:17, Tapas Mishra <mightydreams at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Tapas Mishra wrote:
>>> It is a very silly thing but I now have to ask there is a folder
>>> which is not having any directories but when I do an ls -l from its
>>> parent directory
>>> I just see following
>>> ls -l www/claroline/
>>> total 0
>>>
>>> I expect a long format to be displayed for permissions with respect
>>> to this directory why is that not happening.
>>
>>
>> From "man ls":
>>
>> | NAME
>> |        ls - list directory contents
>>
>> You asked ls to list the contents of the directory www/claroline/ which
>> it did. If you want to list the entry for that directory, try "ls -ld
>> www/claroline/" instead.
>>
>>
>> Nils
> From man ls for
> "       -l     use a long listing format"
> So why did -l did not worked when I gave that option?

Because it lists the long format for the *contents* of the directory
(which is empty apparently), not the directory entry itself.

Colin