-rwxr-xr-- 1 abc abcgrp 2690 May 13 10:43 index.html

1. The Owner

2. The Group

3. Other (any who is not the owner and is not a member of the assigned group)

Read, Write, and Execute permissions are indicated by rwx respectively. Thus, the string of letters at the beginning of the previous example - rwxr-xr-- indicate that the owner, abc can read the file, write to the file, and execute the file (the first three letters - rwx), the Group, abcgrp can read the file and execute it, but they cannot write to the file (the next three letters - r-x), and Other, (also the identifier of any normal user accessing your site from the web) can read the file, but cannot write to or execute it (the final three letters - r--).

When applied to a directory, permissions control access to all of the files within the directory. A letter 'd' precedes the permissions definition to indicate a directory, as in the example below. In this case, not even the Owner has write permissions; so, although the owner can delete any files he has write permissions for from within the directory, he/she may not delete the directory.

There is a numerical shorthand used frequently when referring to permissions that is based on binary code.

In binary code, the first column represents the numeral 1, the second column represents the numeral 2, and the third column represents the numeral 4. Thus:

In the same way, binary numbers can be used to represent permissions (0 = false, 1 = true):

Thus, a file with permissions of rwxr-xr-- would have a numerical equivalent of 751:

    Owner | Group | Other 
      rwx |  r-x  |  r--    
      111 |  101  |  100 
    1+2+4 | 1+0+4 | 1+0+0
  ------------------------------
      7   |   5   |   1

Here is a brief conversion chart:

 1 --x execute 
 2 -w- write 
 3 -wx write and execute
 4 r-- read
 5 r-x read and execute
 6 rw- read and write
 7 rwx read, write and execute

Most web-accessible directories are set to 755 and most html files are set to 711 (or 755) by default.