what is "s" in front of a file perms ?

[Sammy_2]

I found this under /tmp. The file has s in front of all the perms. Also have some other files in /var/tmp with s in front of it ? What's that ?
By the way, this is solaris 9 but I am guessing this is a unix thing and not vendor specific.

srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 18 14:00 portal

[Jeff Schussele · Accepted solution]

Hi Sam,

IF it's the very 1st character, then it denotes the file is a socket.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Geoff Wild]

The s designates a socket bound to a name.

If it was a p - then it would be a pipe.

Rgds...Geoff

[Marvin Strong]

Straight from the ls man page:

The first character indicates the entry type:

b Block special file
c Character special file
d Directory
l Symbolic link
n Network special file
p Fifo (also called a "named pipe") special file
s Socket
- Ordinary file

[Sammy_2]

thanks. Was little confused as I had never seen that. But now, I am clear.