Question

I’m wondering what is the syntax error in my command I’m using.

In the current directory I use the command ls -l to retrieve file permissions in my directory.

How would I do a query to see which files are readable, writeable, and executable by the user and then print a filtered list using awk?

I know the bits I’m interested in are the second, third, and fourth.

For example,

-rw-r----- .. .. .. ..

or

drw-r----- .. .. .. ..

I have an awk command as follows:

ls -l | awk '{if{$1 == /.rwx....../}print "line"}'

I’ve tried many things but there’s still a syntax error.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The operator used to check if a string matches a regular expression is ~, not ==. Also, use () around the condition in the if statement:

ls -l | awk '{ if ($1 ~ /.rwx....../) print "line" }'