-rwxr-xr-x@ meaning

Question

I have a file with an @ after the permissions

-rwxr-xr-x@  1 riccardotacconi  staff   215 14 Sep 14:21 Capfile

Do you know its meaning.

I am deploying a Rails application using Capistrano. That Gemfile is not copies, although it is committed in the SVN repository. Very strange.

This might give a hint. It's for Mac, but it's based on FreeBSD which is similar to Unix/Linux: http://blog.anselmbradford.com/2008/12/24/what-is-the-significance-of-plus-and-at-in-mac-os-x-file-permission-tables/ — Nelson Rothermel, Sep 27 '10 at 14:21

score 13 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:22

The "@" sign -- which is not documented in the manual page for ls(1) indicates that the file has extended attributes. You can use the command 'xattr -l ' to show them

Quote from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes

Extended file attributes is a file system feature that enables users to associate computer files with metadata not interpreted by the filesystem, whereas regular attributes have a purpose strictly defined by the filesystem (such as permissions or records of creation and modification times).

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:24

-rwxr-xr-x for a regular file whose user class has full permissions and whose group and others classes have only the read and execute permissions.

on osx

ls command now displays a "@" character after the permissions string for each file that has extended attributes

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:20

1

You have extended attributes on that file. Run

ls -le

to get more detail.

answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:20

gmoore

111
2

1

It isn't the ACL permissions (those have a +). The @ symbol indicates extended attributes, aka metadata. – Jeff Sep 27 '10 at 14:24
using ls -le I get ls: invalid option -- e – rtacconi Sep 27 '10 at 14:35

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:23

1

Is this on OSX? See the discussion here.

Relevant part:

The "@" sign -- which is not documented in the manual page for ls(1) -- indicates that the file has extended attributes. You can use the command 'xattr -l ' to show them. It seems that a lot of Finder information, which ought to be stored in the catalog, is now in extended attributes.

answered Sep 27 '10 at 14:23

Ethan Shepherd

111
2

if I run xattr I get a command not found – rtacconi Sep 27 '10 at 14:36
xattr should be located at /usr/bin/xattr – Marcel G Sep 27 '10 at 16:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 27 '10 at 21:06

Assuming you're using OS X (newer than 10.4), the @ symbol denotes the file has extended attributes associated with it. (See Stewie's answer for detail.)

To list the extended attribute, use

ls -l@

From the man page for ls:

-@  Display extended attribute keys and sizes in long (-l) output.

You should see something like the following -

(somesystem):~ user$ ls -al@ /
...
drwxr-xr-x@   6 root   wheel       204 Sep 27 12:00 private
 com.apple.FinderInfo       32

If you need to dig deeper than that, use xattr -l

-rwxr-xr-x@ meaning

5 Answers5