macOS ‘ls -l’ command: What does ‘@’ mean?

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: December 31, 2020

When using Apple’s macOS Terminal application, sometimes you’ll issue the ls -l command and see @ characters in the ls command output, like this:

$ ls -l
total 1280
-rw-r--r--@ 1 al  staff   1695 Dec 24 17:19 ca-context-bounds.md
-rw-r--r--  1 al  staff   4064 Dec 24 14:41 ca-type-classes.md
-rw-r--r--@ 1 al  staff  20580 Dec 24 14:41 collections-classes.md
-rw-r--r--@ 1 al  staff  15960 Dec 24 14:29 control-structures.md

Today I learned that the @ character means that the file has extended attributes.

This SO page shows that you can issue these macOS xattr commands to see and manage the extended file attributes:

xattr -l file                       # lists the names of all xattrs
xattr -w attr_name attr_value file  # sets xattr attr_name to attr_value
xattr -d attr_name file             # deletes xattr attr_name
xattr -c file                       # deletes all xattrs
xattr -h                            # prints help

That same page notes that you can use the ls -l@ command to see the attributes in the ls output:

$ ls -l@
total 1280
-rw-r--r--@ 1 al  staff   1695 Dec 24 17:19 ca-context-bounds.md
    com.macromates.selectionRange       1 
    com.macromates.visibleIndex     1

I use the MacroMates TextMate editor quite a bit, and apparently it stores those extended file attributes for each file I edited, or perhaps each file I had visible when I closed the editor.

If you ever wondered what the @ character in the Mac ls -l output means, I hope that’s helpful.

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