Question

I was under the impression that unless you have execute permission for a directory, you can’t search that dir or do a cd to it.

But I tried removing execute permission for a directory, and I can still go into that dir.
Then, what is the real use for execute permission for directories?

# mkdir tmp
# ll
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 13:52 tmp
# chmod 0600 tmp
# ll
total 4
drw------- 2 root root 4096 Jul 13 13:52 tmp
# cd tmp/

Answer 1

You are running as root. root can ignore permissions.

If you want to test out permissions, test using a non-root user.