Re: Working with permissions

[Bob McClure Jr <robertmcclure earthlink net>]

On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 04:10:21PM -0400, Ian Dixon wrote:
> I don't know if this is standard, but on my system, (RH8.0) permissions 
> are shown in mnemonic format. Is it possible to display permissions in 
> an octal format as the default? If this can be done what command would 
> be issued to enable a display change between the two?

I presume you are referencing the "ls -l" command.  I did a "man ls"
(man is your friend) and didn't find any way to change the

drwxrwxrwx

format of the first field of "ls -l" output.

> Thanks to anyone that can help with my further linux education :-)
> Ian

I take it you are familiar with octal:

drwxrwxrwx
|| || ||_|__ Others permissions
|| ||_|_____ Group permissions
||_|________ User (owner) permissions
|___________ directory (or symlink or char or block identifier)

In each triplet of permissions, the coding to octal is

 rwx
 |||___ execute value of 1
 ||____ write   value of 2
 |_____ read    value of 4

So "rw-" is 6, "r--" is 4, "r-x" is 5, etc.  So my home directory:

drwx--x--x  180 bob      bob         12288 May 31 17:31 .

has permissions (ignoring directory bit) 711.  See also

  info chmod

Info is also your friend.

BTW, "ll" also works like "ls -l".  And because of my history with
Xenix, I have my own alias of "l" for "ls -l" because I use it a lot.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure earthlink net  http://www.cumbytel.com/~bobcatos/
"In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are 
 different." - Larry McVoy