There’s a Lot in the Dot: Filesystem Permissions and Pathnames (Part 2)
Still deeper into the dot (.) with an dive into access permissions. Study up because there’s going to be a quiz.
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Access Permissions
Once you see how pathnames work, understanding access permissions is simple. You’re probably familar with access permissions for files: read permission lets a program read the file’s contents, write permission allows modification, and execute permission is for executable programs. Notice that none of those permissions control whether you can rename or delete the file. Why? We’ll see soon.
A directory is actually just a special type of file, and a directory’s permissions are easy to understand when you realize that a directory holds entries for other files. So:
