in linux file permissions, what is the number besides the permissions?

Question

What does the number besides the permission represnet? i.e. the 3, 8, and 1's.

Also, is there a command that combines chown and chgrp ?

Answer 1

You can use chown with the group after the user like so: chown user:group.

The number you mention is the number of hard links to a file. It's always at least 1 (itself).

Answer 2

The number is the number of links to the inode. Directories have two (.. and .) plus the number of subdirectories (each one has ..). Files have N where N is the number of hard links, where all files have at least one.