Go back and read his question. He's running on Windows. Why did he even think a SuSE list would have the answer to the question? In this case, there does happen to be considerable overlap, but in general there's a lot of stuff on Cygwin that is strictly a idiosyncratic to that environment. Should we be entertaining all such questions just because the Gnu tools happen to run on both SuSE and Cygwin?
"This is not a SuSE question .. more of a UNIX question. I have encountered a output from a ls -l command that i have ever seen before ..." The question is not a Cygwin specific question and anyone on the this list could benefit from the post. This list isn't a forum for solely Suse specific questions. Anyone should feel welcome asking a Linux question here as with other Linux distribution list. Besides, you are overlooking the idea of "openness" associated with Gnu/Linux and the concept of sharing knowledge. Luckily for the poster, there were people on this list who were considerate enough to help him out. ~James