It's a symlink:

sterling at rooster:/home/sterling> ln -s /tmp ./tmp
sterling at rooster:/home/sterling> ls -la | grep tmp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sterling sterling     4 Nov 24 12:11 tmp -> /tmp/


On Fri, 24 Nov 2017, gregrwm wrote:

> what is the meaning of "lower case L" in a file permission?  See "lower case
> L" in "Convert ls -l output to chmod format".
> 
>