Question

I can see an individual file’s permissions with ls -l.

In the case where there are hundreds or thousands of files in a directory – most of which I can’t read, how do I check which files I have permission to read?

Answer 1

Try that :

for i in *; do test -r "$i" && echo "$i is readable for $USER"; done

See help test

You can also do (bash test) :

for i in *; do [[ -r "$i" ]] && echo "$i is readable for $USER"; done

See man bash | less +/'\[\[ expression'

Or with POSIX shell :

for i in *; do [ -r "$i" ] && echo "$i is readable for $USER"; done

See help [

Finally

&& is a shortcut (boolean AND) for if condition; then action; fi