Question

In a given shell script I need to take a known path and check it upwards (to the file system root) for correct permissions. How would I split the path and walk upwards in a shell script (can be bash or a "lower common denominator")?

Answer 1

This should work:

unset path
parts=$(pwd | awk 'BEGIN{FS="/"}{for (i=1; i < NF; i++) print $i}')

for part in $parts
do
path="$path/$part"
ls -ld $path   # do whatever checking you need here
done