Meaning of Asterisk After Filename in `ls -l` Command

linuxlsUbuntu

I've done an ls -l inside a directory, and my files are displaying like this : 

james@nevada:~/development/tools/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ll
total 9512
drwxr-xr-x 3 james james    4096 2010-05-07 19:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 james james    4096 2010-08-21 20:43 ../
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james  341773 2010-05-07 19:47 adb*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    3636 2010-05-07 19:47 android*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    2382 2010-05-07 19:47 apkbuilder*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    3265 2010-05-07 19:47 ddms*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james   89032 2010-05-07 19:47 dmtracedump*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    1940 2010-05-07 19:47 draw9patch*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james 6886136 2010-05-07 19:47 emulator*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james  478199 2010-05-07 19:47 etc1tool*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    1987 2010-05-07 19:47 hierarchyviewer*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james   23044 2010-05-07 19:47 hprof-conv*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    1939 2010-05-07 19:47 layoutopt*
drwxr-xr-x 4 james james    4096 2010-05-07 19:48 lib/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james   16550 2010-05-07 19:47 mksdcard*
-rw-r--r-- 1 james james  205851 2010-05-07 19:48 NOTICE.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 james james      33 2010-05-07 19:47 source.properties
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james 1447936 2010-05-07 19:47 sqlite3*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james    3044 2010-05-07 19:47 traceview*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 james james  187965 2010-05-07 19:47 zipalign*

What does that asterisk mean?

I'm also unable to run a particular file, as follows: 

james@nevada:~/development/tools/android-sdk-linux_86/tools$ ./emulator 
bash: ./emulator: No such file or directory

EDIT : I'm trying to get Eclipse to use emulator, but it keeps complaining the files does not exist, yet it is here?

Best Answer

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams has already explained about the *:

It means that the file is executable. A classifier is shown when -F is passed to ls via the command line or otherwise.

As for the executable-looking emulator that you can't actually execute, this can happen when the dynamic loader requested by emulator doesn't exist. You can check what kind of file emulator is with the command file emulator, and check what dynamic loader and libraries it needs with ldd emulator (any line showing “not found” is something you need to install).

Given the name of the directory and the size of the file, emulator is probably a Linux x86 binary. I suspect you have an amd64 system. If so, you need to install a runtime environment for 32-bit applications; on Ubuntu, you need the ia32-libs package (and perhaps also ia32-libs-gtk).

You could also get this error message for a script whose interpreter as indicated in the #! line doesn't exist.

Related Question