File & Directory Permissions & Ownership
If you’ve ever used file sharing on your Mac, you probably noticed that you can set permissions for folders and files, giving certain users, groups of users, or everyone read-only, read-write, or no access. (This is covered in Chapter 4.) Unix has almost the same system with users, groups, and public permissions.
Through the ls command, which I cover earlier in this chapter, you can learn quite a bit more about the ownership and permissions of files on your system. For example, take a look at the ls -la listing for a home directory, in Figure 57. There’s lots of useful information on each line.
Figure 57. A directory listing including permissions and other information for files.
The first line (starting ...
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