This section is from the "Version Control with Subversion" book, by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick and C. Michael Pilato. Also available from Amazon: Version Control with Subversion.
A new feature of Subversion is that you can attach arbitrary metadata (or “properties”) to files and directories. Properties are arbitrary name/value pairs associated with files and directories in your working copy.
To set or get a property name, use the svn propset and svn propget subcommands. To list all properties on an object, use svn proplist.
For more information, see the section called “Properties”.