Whenever ls -l is issued, the first line which appears provided the number of
total files and subdirectories in the particular directory.

From the second line onwards, the first character provides the information if
the particular object is a file (-) or a directory (d).

e.g.,

drwxr-xr-x 2 xyz ppt 96 May 7 01:09 tar1

The first character 'd' depicts that the object 'tar1' is a directory.

Similarly,

-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 323 Mar 23 2004 audit

The first character '-' here depicts that the object audit is a file.

I hope this would clear your doubt.

Cheers.