Shell Programming and Scripting

That won't make a difference. As RudiC stated, if the shell is privileged, the read test will always succeed.

---------- Post updated at 03:00 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:47 PM ----------

This is what lies behind bash's implementation, from lib/sh/eaccess.c:

Code:

  if (current_user.euid == 0)
    {
      /* Root can read or write any file. */
      if ((mode & X_OK) == 0)
	return (0);

      /* Root can execute any file that has any one of the execute
	 bits set. */
      if (st.st_mode & S_IXUGO)
	return (0);
    }

In that code, "mode" is an integral value representing what is being tested (reading = R_OK, writing = W_OK, executable = X_OK, a regular file = F_OK, etc).

Regards,
Alister