very newbie question ls -l output

[limester]

Hi,

If I have output from ls -l:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 512 Sep 12 09:55 12sept
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 512 Sep 14 13:39 14sept

what does the 2 mean in second column?

there are different numbers that are possible as well, tried the man page but no luck.

Thanks!

 

[xwb]

The number of references to that inode. If you look at normal files, it will be 1. If you make a link to it, it will be 2. See how many there are for vi.

 

[geirendre]

http://www.computerhope.com/unix/uls.htm

Use cd to change into the directory, and

ls -la

to see the references.
In your case (for the to directories in your example)
it will only be:
. and
..
. == current directory,
.. == parent directory.

(cd .. takes you to the parent directory.)

http://www.linux.org/lessons/

HTH