unix file attributes: general question

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

I know little about unix file attributes, and wonder if someone would
point me to an introduction to the subject.

When a file is saved, I specify its name and where to save it. I know
from use of the ls -l command that there's additional information
about ownership, permission, last saved date date, size, and basic
file type (directory or doc).

Is there any other attribute information stored or potentially stored
in the file? Applications apparently can detect a document's file
type, so that information must be held somewhere. Is information about
the document's MIME type and charset also held?

I thought that the command lsattrib would display all this
information, but apparently no such command or utility exists. Is
there something that will display all the information about a file,
going beyond the ls -l command?

Haines Brown