What is the command to find the read/write permissions for a single file?

Question

I know that ls -l lists the permissions of every file in a directory but what is the command if I want to see the permissions of just a specific file?

Answer 1

To just get the mode:

stat -c %a file

(where file can also be a directory).

Note: this is with the stat command from the GNU Coreutils. Otherwise the solution is system dependent.

Answer 2

To get all the info provided by ls -l for a single file or folder, use the -d option and specify the file:

ls -ld filename

Answer 3

If your intention is to do something depending on the file permission then in some cases you can consider simple test (aka [ or [[) conditional statement:

• -r file exists and read permission is granted
• -w file exists and write permission is granted
• -x exists and execute permission is granted

For example:

[ -w file ] && echo foo >> file

Answer 4

As "permissions" doesn't just cover octal unix permissions on modern Linux systems, I'd like to elaborate a little:

Apart from stat -c %a file @vinc17 suggested, there's stat -c %C file for the SELinux context on RHEL Systems, and getfacl file for volumes using ACLs.

namei -m /path/to/file might be helpful for finding out all octal permissions leading down the path to the file, as wrong permissions on the parent directories can inhibit access.