strange ls -l output

This is a sample output of ls -l on my Ubuntu 17.04 box:

drwxr-xr-x 2 amoro amoro 4096 kvě  6 16:26 myfile

There are two parameters that I don't recognize. Counting from left to right, the 6th and the 7th, i.e., kvě and 6 respectively. I googled this but couldn't find an answer. Do you have any clues?


When encountering similar situations, try setting the default locale as en_US, in your case with the command is ls -l, you would run:

LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 ls -l

It will produce all output in en_US so there will be no confusion.

-rw-rw-r-- 1 ravexina ravexina  79 Sep 20 2016 test.txt

You can change it using:

localectl set-locale LC_ALL=en_US.utf8

or only for date:

localectl set-locale LC_TIME=en_US.utf8

then logout and login again, if it did not take effect, reboot your system.


Here's one on my system

drwxrwxr-x  2 zanna zanna 4096 May  5 07:44 custom

Left to right we have

  • type (directory)
  • mode (permissions)
  • hardlinks (2)
  • owner (zanna)
  • group (zanna)
  • size (in bytes)
  • month last modified (May)
  • day of the month last modified (5th)
  • time last modified on that day
  • filename

So the fields confusing you are the month and day of the last modification of the file. Kve must be a month or abbreviation of the name of a month in your system locale/language.