In Unix-like operating systems, file ownership refers to the user and group that have control over a particular file or directory through the use of file permissions.

Together, ownership and permissions allow to improve the overall security of the system by enabling administrators and users to control who can access and modify each file and directory.

Checking file ownership

To display detailed information about a file, including its ownership, you can use the ls command with the -l flag as follows:

$ ls -l [file ...]

Where file ... is an optional list of paths to the files you want to check.

Note: For directories, you'll have to specify the path to the parent directory, as the ls command will otherwise list the content of the target directory.

Example

This command will display extended information about all the files and directories located in the current working directory:

$ ls -l-rw-r--r--  1 john  developers   0 Apr 22 16:18 script.sh

Where:

• john is the name of the user the files belong to.