Quick Start Guide

Permissions for Oth-
ers
Group PermissionsUser PermissionsType
r--r--rw--
The rst column of the list consists of one leading character followed by nine charac-
ters grouped in three blocks. The leading character indicates the le type of the object:
in this case, the hyphen (–) shows that kde-start.xml is a le. If you nd the character
d instead, this shows that the object is a directory, like local in Example 6.1, “Access
Permissions For Files and Folders” (page 82).
The next three blocks show the access permissions for the owner, the group and
other users (from left to right). Each block follows the same pattern: the rst position
shows read permissions (r), the next position shows write permissions (w), the last
one shows execute permission (x). A lack of either permission is indicated by -. In
our example, the owner of kde-start.xml has read and write access to the le but
cannot execute it. The users group can read the le but cannot write or execute it.
The same holds true for the other users as shown in the third block of characters.
6.3.2 Files and Folders
Access permissions have a slightly dierent impact depending on the type of object
they apply to: le or directory. The following table shows the details:
Table 6.2 Access Permissions For Files And Directories
FolderFileAccess
Permis-
sion
Users can view the contents of
the directory. Without this per-
Users can open and read the le.Read (r)
mission, users cannot list the
contents of this directory with ls
-l, for example. However, if they
only have execute permission
for the directory, they can never-
theless access certain les in
this directory if they know of
their existence.
Users can create, rename or
delete les in the directory.
Users can change the le: They can
add or drop data and can even
Write
(w)
delete the contents of the le.
However, this does not include the
permission to remove the le com-
Basic Concepts 83