5.4 Listing Directory Contents
5.4.5 Listing individual directories
Use the ls -ld command to display detailed information about a directory, but not its contents. This is useful when you want to see the permissions on a directory and not the information about its contents. (Permissions are discussed in detail in the chapter on File Security.)  As shown in the Figure, the ls -l command lists detailed information on files and directories in dir1 while the ls -ld command lists detailed information only on dir1 itself.