Accessing files

To access local files, users need the following permissions:

Read and search permission to all directories in the path names of files the user should use. Read permission is required for some options of some commands.
Write permission to all directories in which the user will be creating or deleting files or directories.
Read permission, write permission, or read and write permission, as appropriate to all files that the user needs to access.
Execute permission to executable files that the user needs to run.

Table 1 shows types of access and the permissions granted by the accesses.

Table 1. File access types and permission bits. This table shows the permissions needed for each access type.
Access	Permission for file	Permission for directory
Read	Permission to read or print the contents.	Permission to read, but not search, the contents.
Write	Permission to change, add to, or delete from the contents.	Permission to change, add, or delete directory entries.
Execute or Search	Permission to run the file. This permission is used for executable files.	Permission to search the directory.

With read permission, you can see the names of the entries stored in the directory but you cannot see the attributes stored in the entries nor access the contents of the directory. With search permission, you can read the attributes from a specific entry and locate a specific entry of the directory.