inode

A data structure holding information about files in a Unix

file system. There is an inode for each file and a file

is uniquely identified by the file system on which it

resides and its inode number on that system. Each inode

contains the following information: the device where the inode

resides, locking information, mode and type of file, the

number of links to the file, the owner's user and group ids,

the number of bytes in the file, access and modification

times, the time the inode itself was last modified and the

addresses of the file's blocks on disk. A Unix directory is

an association between file leafnames and inode numbers. A

file's inode number can be found using the "-i" switch to ls.

Unix manual page: fs(5).

See also /usr/include/ufs/inode.h.