Another aspect of the ls command is that it doesn't give you all the information about a file. In order to get a full listing of the current directory, you must type in 'ls -l'. This will give you the long listing of that directory. Use a simple shell script. This will bring up the manual pages for the ls command.
Manual pages are sometimes quite cryptic and difficult to understand.
If you can't understand a manual page and you are still confused, you might think about getting a unix book, or asking someone who knows. For more help using Unix, refer to the Unixhelp for Users web site.