Difference between ls –L and ls –l.

We are in directory

>pwd

/proj62/prod/OMC-U/work/leonidk

Run

>ls -al temip_resource.dat

lrwxrwxrwx 1 leonidk users 28 Apr 14 2006 temip_resource.dat -> ../milcmp/temip_resource.dat

As you can see – “ls –al” shows that temip_resource.dat is link to file

../milcmp/temip_resource.dat. We don’t know from command “ls –al “

whether target file exists or not.

Let’s check it:

>ls -aL temip_resource.dat

temip_resource.dat

OK – file exists – now let’s see all it’s (target file) settings:

>ls -aLl temip_resource.dat

-rwxr-xr-x 1 igorz cse 6864 Nov 7 2004 temip_resource.dat

Another example – target file does not exists

>ls -al stub

lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nobody 13 Dec 4 18:29 stub -> /tmp/xxx/stub

stub is link to /tmp/xxx/stub

>ls -aL stub

stub: No such file or directory

It means – that our link point to file which does not exist