UNIX Command
$ls -l vmlinuz lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Dec 1 02:44 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-1-amd64 $ls -lL vmlinuz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2725680 Nov 29 19:49 vmlinuz $
UNIX Explanation
-L, --dereference when showing file information for a symbolic link, show information for the file the link references rather than for the link itself.
Theory Drop
In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution.[1] Symbolic links were already present by 1978 in mini-computer operating systems from DEC and Data General's RDOS. Today they are supported by the POSIX operating-system standard, most Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X, and also Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7 and to some degree in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Symbolic links operate transparently for most operations: programs which read or write to files named by a symbolic link will behave as if operating directly on the target file. However, programs that need to handle symbolic links specially (e.g., backup utilities) may identify and manipulate them directly. source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link