In the following example, we use the -l option to display a full listing of my /usr directory.

$ ls -l /usr
drwxr-xr-x    7 root     root          168 Nov 24 14:02 X11R6
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root        14576 Dec 27 08:56 bin
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         8856 Dec 26 12:47 distfiles
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 Dec 22 20:57 doc -> share/doc
drwxr-xr-x   62 root     root         1856 Dec 27 15:54 gentoo-x86
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root          152 Dec 12 23:10 i686-linux
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root           96 Nov 24 13:17 i686-pc-linux-gnu
drwxr-xr-x   54 root     root         5992 Dec 24 22:30 include
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           10 Dec 22 20:57 info -> share/info
drwxr-xr-x   28 root     root        13552 Dec 26 00:31 lib
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root           72 Nov 25 00:34 libexec
drwxr-xr-x    8 root     root          240 Dec 22 20:57 local
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 Dec 22 20:57 man -> share/man
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           11 Dec  8 07:59 portage -> gentoo-x86/
drwxr-xr-x   60 root     root         1864 Dec  8 07:55 portage.old
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root         3096 Dec 22 20:57 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   46 root     root         1144 Dec 24 15:32 share
drwxr-xr-x    8 root     root          328 Dec 26 00:07 src
drwxr-xr-x    6 root     root          176 Nov 24 14:25 ssl
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           10 Dec 22 20:57 tmp -> ../var/tmp

The first column displays permissions information for each item in the listing. I'll explain how to interpret this information in a bit. The next column lists the number of links to each filesystem object, which we'll gloss over now but return to later. The third and fourth columns list the owner and group, respectively. The fifth column lists the object size. The sixth column is the "last modified" time or "mtime" of the object. The last column is the object's name. If the file is a symbolic link, you'll see a trailing -> and the path to which the symbolic link points.