On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 02:51:52AM -0400, Greg Evans wrote:
> my machine
> 
>      drwxrwxrwx  22 root    wheel        704 Apr  4 22:34 directory
>                  ^^
> friends machine
> 
>     drwxrwxrwx  43 root    wheel        704 Apr  4 22:34 directory
>                 ^^

(Fixed your arrows, Greg, hope that's okay.)

This is in ls(1):

   The Long Format
     If the -l option is given, the following information is displayed for
     each file:
           file mode
           number of links
           owner name
           group name
           file flags (if -o given)
           number of bytes in the file
           abbreviated month file was last modified
           day-of-month file was last modified
           hour and minute file was last modified
           pathname

The number you're interested in is the number of links to the inode
containing that file.

Note that, within a given directory, there exists a file . (a link
to the same inode) and within each subdirectory a file .. (a link to
the same inode), which explains why the number is so high.

(I'd say that directory has 21 subdirectories on your machine and 42
on your friend's machine, so they must not be totally identical.)

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net