[SOLVED] Finding all directories that are world readable

Issue

**I cannot use find as I get a permission denied error

I am trying to find all the directories in /students that are world readable. This is what I have so far:

grep 'r-x' | cut -c8-10 | ls -l /students | sort | uniq -c

I don't understand why this is not working. I am telling the shell to search for occurrences of 'r-x'in the 8th-10th characters of ls -l which is other users permissions (hence world readable). Then I'm sorting the output and displaying a count of matching results with uniq -c. This is my understanding of what my shell script should do and I dont see why its not. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

For some reason it's pulling out more than just the directories readable by others.

Here is some sample output (I omitted the majority of the output)

1 drwx------ 11 lluong   b20107   4096 May 26 11:15 lluong
  1 drwx------ 23 stretbar b20097   4096 Dec 18  2012 stretbar
  1 drwx------  2 slawson  b20003   4096 Mar  2  2013 slawson
  1 drwx------  9 fcunha   b20117   4096 May  2 15:21 fcunha
  1 drwxrwxrwx 10 jwu131   b20117   4096 Jul  2 19:26 jwu131
  1 drwxrwxrwx 14 jadler4  b20127   4096 Oct 11  2012 jadler4
  1 drwxrwxrwx  5 rlicudo1 b20067   4096 Apr  3 15:28 rlicudo1
  1 drwxrwxrwx  8 lkrubner b20107   4096 Oct 25  2011 lkrubner
  1 drwxrwxrwx  9 klau53   b20133   4096 Mar 12  2013 klau53
  1 drwxrwx--x 14 vrobins9 b20123   4096 Mar  4  2013 vrobins9
  1 drwxr-xr-x 10 aguo3    b20107   4096 Sep 24 00:13 aguo3
  1 drwxr-xr-x 10 mdanial  b20123   4096 Apr 10 20:46 mdanial
  1 drwxr-xr-x 11       49 users    4096 Mar 28  2013 trac
  1 drwxr-xr-x 11 rroger12 b20133   4096 May  8 10:00 rroger12
  1 drwxr-xr-x 12 spark15  b20113   4096 May 15  2012 spark15
  1 drwxr-xr-x 18 lulrich1 b20133   4096 Sep 29 22:36 lulrich1
  1 drwxr-xr-x 18 yliu192  b20127   4096 Sep 26 12:19 yliu192
  1 drwxr-xr-x 19 dstein   b20117   4096 Feb  9  2013 dstein
  1 drwxr-xr-x 20 jgarc166 b20127   4096 Sep 12 19:22 jgarc166
  1 drwxr-xr-x  2 root     root    16384 Nov 15  2007 lost+found
  1 drwxr-xr-x  4 jsarno   b20113   4096 Dec  7  2011 jsarno
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 btaylo19 b20123   4096 Mar  5  2012 btaylo19
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 dtu      b20093   4096 Apr 18 19:18 dtu
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 ewu2     b20133   4096 May  4 14:30 ewu2
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 smeehan  b20053   4096 Aug 29 00:19 smeehan
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 ybondar2 b20027   4096 May 23  2012 ybondar2
  1 drwxr-xr-x  7 apekar   b20103   4096 May 10 00:22 apekar
  1 drwxr-xr-x  7 root     root     4096 Mar 28  2013 tracprojects
  1 drwxr-xr-x  8 jhsiao   b20117   4096 Jul 26 17:33 jhsiao
  1 drwxr-xr-x  8 xfeng18  b20137   4096 Sep 25 14:42 xfeng18
  1 drwxr-xr-x  9 cmendo26 b20133   4096 Aug 19 01:22 cmendo26
  1 drwx-----x  8 amissiro b20093   4096 May 12 16:00 amissiro
  1 drwx--xr-x 17 apinchuk b20127   4096 May 26 23:03 apinchuk
  1 drwx--x--x 10 aboak    b20093   4096 Feb 18  2013 aboak
  1 drwx--x--x 10 achan123 b20133   4096 Sep  6 21:24 achan123
  1 drwx--x--x 10 acurkend b20133   4096 Jul 10 13:15 acurkend
  1 drwx--x--x 10 akleinii b20133   4096 Jun 21 09:07 akleinii
  1 drwx--x--x 10 akobzar  b20133   4096 Sep 26 18:51 akobzar
  1 drwx--x--x 10 amainett b20137   4096 Sep 22 11:17 amainett
  1 drwx--x--x 10 apewther b20127   4096 Feb  6  2013 apewther
  1 drwx--x--x 10 asyrtsov b20127   4096 Aug 16 10:43 asyrtsov
  1 drwx--x--x 10 bernst   b20135   4096 Sep 23 09:12 bernst
  1 drwx--x--x 10 blilley  b20123   4096 Apr 20 18:08 blilley
  1 drwx--x--x 10 bmckeand b20117   4096 Aug 14 14:17 bmckeand
  1 drwx--x--x 10 bsmith18 b20097   4096 Jun 10 11:19 bsmith18
  1 drwx--x--x 10 bwilli18 b20117   4096 Nov  6  2012 bwilli18
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cbeaton  b20123   4096 May 19 04:07 cbeaton
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cbeck4   b20137   4096 Sep 29 16:08 cbeck4
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cho8     b20093   4096 Mar 24  2013 cho8
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cliu58   b20117   4096 Oct  8  2012 cliu58
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cmitch21 b20133   4096 Mar 10  2013 cmitch21
  1 drwx--x--x 10 cnavarr9 b20127   4096 Apr 30 12:11 cnavarr9
  1 drwx--x--x 10 dbienenf b20123   4096 Mar 20  2012 dbienenf
  1 drwx--x--x 10 dlau13   b20135   4096 Jul 16 12:15 dlau13
  1 drwx--x--x 10 dmok1    b20137   4096 Sep 24 12:50 dmok1
  1 drwx--x--x 10 dnou     b20133   4096 Apr 23 14:12 dnou
  1 drwx--x--x 10 drajabar b20137   4096 Sep  3 20:20 drajabar
  1 drwx--x--x 10 drodri12 b20115   4096 Sep 27 17:25 drodri12
  1 drwx--x--x 10 ealberto b20113   4096 Dec 18  2012 ealberto

Solution

Rather than parsing ls, use find:

find /students -perm -o=r

This would list all files and directories in /students that are world readable.

If you don't want to recurse into subdirectories and want to find only directories, say:

find /students -maxdepth 1 -type d -perm -o=r

Answered By - devnull

Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (WPSolving Volunteer)