What does the 1 mean?

[7]

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jan 19 08:17 cdrom -> /dev/hdc

In this. You see the 1 after the permissions? No one seems to know what it is.
?

[The Whizzard]

I've just did some tinkering.
It seems it has something to do with the number threads or directories.
A 1 indicates a file or link. A 2 indicates a directory. A 3 indicates a directory in that directory. And so on.
I could be way off base here, but it is the pattern I was seeing.

[7]

Hmm.

£ ls -l /

...
drwxr-xr-x 45 root root 4096 Mar 15 18:47 etc
...

So does that mean there are 45 files in /etc ?

[nopun]

Was my original (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=016404) reply that bad?
In the case of a directory, I think the number indicates the number of entries in that driectory (including ".." amd ".").
In any case it means the number of things using that inode (an inode, put simply, is a number that represents a portion of disk. A file may use one or more inodes. To see inode information on your files, type "ls -i")

[7]

lol

Sorry nopun, I thought I had asked this question before, so I did a search and it dident come up ( or I couldent find it at least ). I understand now :)

Thx.

[Strike]

It's the "number of hard links" (info ls)