What does each part of the `ls -la` output mean?

Question

What do the following numbers represent?

Answer 1

Let’s take this one to analyse:

-rwxrw-r-- 1 root    root       4096 Dec 18 16:41 somefile.txt

We will split the output for better understanding.

Field1  Field2  Field3  Field4  Field5  Field6  Field7  Field8  Field9        Field10

-       rwx     rw-     r--     1       root    root    4096    Dec 18 16:41  somefile.txt

• First field:

  • - for regular file, d for Directory, l for symlink

• Second: The owner can read, write and execute this file

• Third: The owner's group can read and write this file

• Fourth: Other users can read, but not write or execute this file.

• Fifth: The number of hard links to this file or directories inside this directory.

• Sixth: The object's owner

• Seventh: The object's owner's group. All of the users in this group (for example, root, user, www-data, etc.) are affected by the permissions in field 3.

• Eighth field is the object's size in bytes. Note: ls -lh will use k, M, G, T etc. for human readable. (See man ls or run ls --help.)

• Ninth field: The object's last modified time; for directories this is not inheritive.

• Tenth field: The object's name as stored in the filesystem's table of contents

See understanding the Unix permission model, man chmod and apropos permissions for more information.

Note: Some versions of ls(1) also display the octal permissions, which are a simple way of using a number to display and store the first through fourth fields.

Answer 2

The numbers represents:

1 is the number of hard links

7160 the file size in bytes.