execute Permissions on a Directory: What Do the Experts Say?

• "Execute permission lets you pass through the directory when it is a component of a pathname that we are trying to access. (We need to search the directory to look for a specific filename.)"

  • APUE, p. 93

• "When [execute permission is] set for a directory, this permission grants the ability to access file contents and meta-information if its name is known, but not list files inside the directory, unless read is set also."

  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system_permissions#Traditional_Unix_permissions, last edited June 16 2017, retrieved July 17 2017.