What are the UNIX file permissions?
If you type ‘ll’ at a command prompt, you might see something like % ll (clipped) -rwxrw—- 1 johnson cheme 1056 Oct 3 10:37 index.html -rw——- 1 johnson cheme 691 Sep 29 15:54 myface.jpg (clipped) The -rwxrw—- represents the permissions for index.html. The first character represents special attributes. ‘d’ is for directory ‘-‘ is for normal file. The remaining 9 characters are intrepreted in groups of 3. The first ‘rwx’ is user permissions. In this case, index.html is readable writable, and executable by the user. The second group of 3 characters (‘rw-‘) is the group permissions. In our example, index.html is readable and writable (but not executable) by anyone in the group ‘cheme’. The final 3 characters (‘—‘) are permissions for ‘world’ or ‘everyone’. In this case, index.html is not readable by anyone outside the group cheme.
