What does the period after -rw-rw-r-- mean?

[Brad De Vries]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 6:29 AM, James McDonald
<james at jamesmcdonald.id.au>wrote:

> Tried to google but not putting in the right terms. So here is a question
>
> -rw-rw-r--. <== what does this period mean in the listing below?
>
>
> $ls -al
> total 68
> drwx------   2 jm jm  4096 2010-09-21 20:02 .
> drwx------  33 jm jm  4096 2010-09-12 18:34 ..
> -rw-rw-r--.  1 jm jm     8 2010-09-21 20:10 announcements.aux
> -rw-rw-r--.  1 jm jm  5641 2010-07-13 07:06 announcements.log
> -rw-rw-r--.  1 jm jm 33070 2010-07-13 07:06 announcements.pdf
> -rwxrwxrwx   1 jm jm  1167 2010-07-13 07:06 announcements.tex
> -rwxrwxrwx   1 jm jm  1129 2009-12-23 08:14 announcements.tex~
> -rwxrwxrwx   1 jm jm   359 2009-12-23 07:31 mylatex.tex~
>
>
>
James, the info page for ls indicates the character after the permission
bits specifies an "alternate access method" applies to the file.  However,
the GNU online manual says:
GNU ls uses a ‘.’ character to indicate a file with an SELinux security
context, but no other alternate access method.
(
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/What-information-is-listed.html
)

I guess you get to take your pick.

Brad.
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