There is literally nothing on google that I can find that will help me answer this question. I presume it is passing some other parameter to ls -i?
How do I find the inode of any directory?
ls;inode
Yes, the argument -i will print the inode number of each file or directory the ls command is listing.As you want to print the inode number of a directory, I would suggest using the argument -d to only list directories.For printing the inode number the directory /path/to/dir, use the following command line:ls -id /path/to/dirFrom man ls:   -d, --directory          list  directory entries instead of contents, and do not derefer          ence symbolic links   -i, --inode          print the index number of each file