linux – AgileAdam.com

After a quick Google search for “ls permissions octal” I found a very handy alias to put in my .bashrc. Not only is it handy to see the OCTAL value of the permissions for each file/dir, it will undoubtedly help you more quickly recognize/interpret the normal ls -al output.

alias lso="ls -alG | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr(\$1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf(\" %0o \",k);print}'"

1	alias lso="ls -alG \| awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr(\$1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf(\" %0o \",k);print}'"

Example usage:

mycomp:~ adam$ lso
755 drwxr-xr-x 15 adam staff 510 Dec 6 02:47 .vim
644 -rw-r--r-- 1 adam staff 1136 Dec 18 16:55 .vim_mru_files
600 -rw------- 1 adam staff 13665 Dec 18 16:56 .viminfo

mycomp:~ adam$ lso

755 drwxr-xr-x 15 adam staff 510 Dec 6 02:47 .vim

644 -rw-r--r-- 1 adam staff 1136 Dec 18 16:55 .vim_mru_files

600 -rw------- 1 adam staff 13665 Dec 18 16:56 .viminfo

You can also type (or paste) this slightly different version into terminal:

ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'

1	ls -l \| awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'