What does the "@" (at) symbol mean on OSX ls?

Question

When I check permission of less files from the command line on my Snow Leopard OSX system using Bash I see -rw-r--r--@ for certain files and for others I just see -rw-r--r-- What does the @ mean here?

score 166 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 09 '23 at 14:53

166

On OSX, the @ symbol indicates that the file has extended attributes. You can see them using xattr -l, or ls -l@. From man 1 ls on OSX 10.9:

The following options are available:
-@      Display extended attribute keys and sizes in long (-l) output.
...
If the file or directory has extended attributes, 
the permissions field printed by the `-l` option is followed by a `@` character.

edited Jan 09 '23 at 14:53

enharmonic

702

answered Dec 26 '13 at 08:06

Chris Down

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Thanks! I just tried and I saw xattr -l variables.less com.macromates.caret: .. Need to see why TextMate does this.. – rhand Dec 26 '13 at 08:09
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And just in case if you want to remove those attribes, you can use xattr -c filename.ext or xattr -cr somefolder to do it recursively. – Ricardo Martins Jul 09 '21 at 07:43

What does the "@" (at) symbol mean on OSX ls?

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