Now it is determined who may do what with this file. Basically there are the options "Read", "Write", "Execute". The permission "execute" is mostly of no interest on a web server (at least not with PHP Scripts, because these are only read by the web server). Now these permissions can be set for the owner, the group and for all the others. The permissions are usually written as numbers. The numbers for the permissions:

• 1 = may execute
• 2 = may write
• 4 = may read

If we want to set, e.g. that an owner may read, write (also delete) and execute a file, all the others, however, may only read the file, this would be: Owner = 1 + 2 + 4 = 7, group = 4, others = 4. Because the permissions are always written in this order the usual style of writing is 0744 ("0" at the beginning states that it concerns "octale" figures and shows no real value).