File Permissions (System Administration Guide: Security Services)

System Administration Guide: Security Services

File Permissions

The following table lists and describes the permissions that you can give to each user class for a file.

Table 15–1 File Permissions


Symbol	Permission	Description
`r`	Read	Designated users can open and read the contents of a file.
`w`	Write	Designated users can write to the file (modify its contents), add to it, or delete it.
`x`	Execute	Designated users can execute the file (if it is a program or shell script), or run the program with one of the `exec(2)` system calls.
`-`	Denied	Designated users cannot read, write, or execute the file.

These file permissions apply to special files such as devices, sockets, and named pipes (FIFOs), as they do to regular files.

For a symbolic link, the permissions that apply are the permissions of the file that the link points to.