Reading Permissions

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Terminal journey — lesson 54 of 82.

Use ls -l to display the detailed file listing and examine the permission strings for each item.

Look at the output and identify the permissions for each file and directory. For each item, read the 10-character permission string and determine:

Whether it's a file (-) or directory (d)
What permissions the owner has (first group of three)
What permissions the group has (second group of three)
What permissions others have (third group of three)

Run the command:

ls -l

In the output, notice how backup.sh, report.txt, and config.cfg are regular files. Observe their specific read and write permissions for the owner.

Compare these to the projects directory, which starts with d instead of -, and has execute permission which allows users to enter the directory.

Challenge

Easy

Use ls -l to display the detailed file listing and examine the permission strings for each item.

Look at the output and identify the permissions for each file and directory. For each item, read the 10-character permission string and determine:

Whether it's a file (-) or directory (d)
What permissions the owner has (first group of three)
What permissions the group has (second group of three)
What permissions others have (third group of three)

Run the command:

ls -l

In the output, notice how backup.sh, report.txt, and config.cfg are regular files without execute permission (x). Compare these to the projects directory, which starts with d instead of - and includes execute permission, allowing users to enter the directory.

Try it yourself

Terminal