Readin File permissions?

[thaiZilla]

How do i read a file permission?

i know that ls -l *filename* will list all information about the file including file permissions eg -rwxr-xr-x 1 norman.thai users 187 Jan 15 10:33 firstline...

how do i read just the file permission tho to use be used as a variable...
-rwxr-xr-x

i also understand that the file permissions can be read as binary 000 000 000...

[ashitpro]

How do i read a file permission?

i know that ls -l *filename* will list all information about the file including file permissions eg -rwxr-xr-x 1 norman.thai users 187 Jan 15 10:33 firstline...

how do i read just the file permission tho to use be used as a variable...
-rwxr-xr-x

i also understand that the file permissions can be read as binary 000 000 000...

use this command

ls -l *filename* | awk {'print $1'}

[thaiZilla]

use this command

ls -l *filename* | awk {'print $1'}

Hey thanks for your reply. However i've not used awk or sed before and i'm not suppose to use it for this exercise. The full task is to use a file as an argument then display the permissions in a certain format like so :-

READ WRITE EXECUTE
OWNER LEE.BALLANCORE YES YES NO
GROUP USERS YES NO NO
EVERYBODY NO NO NO

i jus want to know how to read the permissions in binary so i can use if statements to create the text...if ya get me, sorry if it sounds a bit of a woffle

[ashitpro]

Hey thanks for your reply. However i've not used awk or sed before and i'm not suppose to use it for this exercise. The full task is to use a file as an argument then display the permissions in a certain format like so :-

READ WRITE EXECUTE
OWNER LEE.BALLANCORE YES YES NO
GROUP USERS YES NO NO
EVERYBODY NO NO NO

i jus want to know how to read the permissions in binary so i can use if statements to create the text...if ya get me, sorry if it sounds a bit of a woffle

If I am not wrong, you are trying to achieve this with C code..correct me If I am wrong.

Check out this link..

http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Permission-Bits.html#Permission-Bits
Here are enough macros to read the permission for file.

If you are doing this under shell script..then no option other that 'awk'.

[numberwhun]

Another good link to read is this one.

Regards,

Jeff