Question

In bash how would one output the non-readable contents of a directory?

For example, let’s say the directory is ~/foo, and there’s a non-readable folder ~/foo/folder with a file ~/foo/folder/file1.txt, and another non-readable file ~/foo/file2.txt. I want to output:

~/foo/folder cannot be read.
~/foo/folder/file1.txt cannot be read.
~/foo/file2.txt cannot be read.

Answer 1

If you cannot read folder ~/foo/folder, there’s no way for you to detect any files in it, be they readable or not.

If you can read ~/foo, you can go over all files and directories and test, wether they are readable or not:

find ~/foo | while read file; do
    if test \! -r "$file"; then
        echo "$file cannot be read"
    fi
done