Solaris is like every other OS. Functionality varies by VERSION. You didn't specify the version of Solaris, so I'm reference Solaris 9.

The "-l" returns the year if it is more than six months old. In that event you'd see:

Dec 26 2005

Here's the reference from the man page:

     -l    Lists in long format,  giving  mode,  ACL  indication,
           number of links, owner, group, size in bytes, and time
           of last modification for each file (see above). If the
           file  is  a  special file, the size field instead con-
           tains the major and minor device numbers. If the  time
           of  last  modification is greater than six months ago,
           it is shown in the format `month date  year'  for  the
           POSIX  locale. When the LC_TIME locale category is not
           set to the POSIX locale, a  different  format  of  the
           time  field  may  be  used.  Files modified within six
           months show `month date time'. If the file is  a  sym-
           bolic  link,  the filename is printed followed by "->"
           and the path name of the referenced file.

It looks like POSIX locale can be used to affect the output, so that may be the approach you want to take.

what is the file is not more than 6 months old, but I still want to get the year?

Thanks

Well, if you don't use POSIX locale, then I'd say you examine the characters following the Month and Day. If they contain a colon (:), then the data is indicative of a date within the past 6 months. If the current date is July thru December, then the year is the current Year. Otherwise...

Short Answer: I'm not aware of any "clean" way to do this. Unless POSIX locales offer some options.

>modern Solaris has -E option

I am not sure what he considers "Modern" Solaris, but only Solaris 10 has the -E option.

To see if it works for you just use the command;
ls -E

The output is a little different than what you are use to, right after the file size is the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd and the time in the format hh:mm:ss

If you tell us what you are trying to do that you need the year, someone here may no of a tool or technique that will preform your task....