[PLUG] What's the Dot in the Access Modes Column Mean?

[Bill Thoen]

Hi folks,

I've got a Red Hat Fedora core 11 system that has a relatively new 
feature that I don't recognize and my Google-fu doesn't seem to be 
strong enough this morning to find the answer to this question.

When I run ls -al I get  a listing like the following. But notice the 
dot on the right of the access modes for nearly all the files. It's 
there on all except MapBook.zip. Can someone tell me what this dot 
indicates and why it doesn't appear with MapBook.zip?

drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root    4096 2010-04-06 21:05 .
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root    4096 2009-10-18 12:58 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2808 2005-03-08 13:09 14er.txt
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     7282 2003-11-10 11:47 BrowseFolder.mb
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2811 2003-01-31 12:37 Coord_Conversion_HOWTO.txt
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     6644 2002-06-12 11:48 directorydemo.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    16341 2004-12-31 15:33 DistanceToolEx.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     2744 2002-06-12 11:48 euclid.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp   135347 2005-03-15 15:26 hershey.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     7719 2002-06-12 11:48 hexcell.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    11298 2003-08-04 15:25 HexGrid_Sample.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    13813 2005-01-03 11:24 ImportExcel.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp    14443 2004-08-22 12:07 InetLib.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp  1633177 2003-03-26 10:17 Iraq_av.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp  1526664 2003-03-24 15:22 Iraq.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp     6175 2004-10-08 14:05 LayoutText.zip
-rw-r--r--  1 ftp  ftp   398740 2010-04-06 20:33 MapBook.zip
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root    4096 2005-08-22 13:47 MapData
-rw-r--r--. 1 ftp  ftp   230313 2006-03-30 09:36 MI2SVG.zip

Thanks!

-- 
- Bill Thoen 
  GISnet - www.gisnet.com
  303-786-9961