[Novices] permissions & sharing between users

[Steve Petersen]

Thanks everyone for your help!  I'm a bit clearer about things--and feel 
a bit better about the things that are still unclear.  One follow-up 
question:

>>Second, suppose I wanted a subdirectory of my home directory to be 
>>shareable in this way.  I tried 'chmod 1777' and the like but still 
>>other users can't see it, I guess because the parent directory is still 700?
> 
> 
> Yes, it's because your home directory is not readable by other users.
> 
> You could let people read your home directory by giving it 755
> permissions.  They won't be able to write to your home, they can only
> write to files and directories in your home where they have write
> permission.  And they won't be able to create or delete files/sub-dirs
> in your home, no matter what permissions the files/sub-dirs have.
> They will still be able to access files in your shared subdir if you
> give it 777 permissions.

But would they be able to read my actual files?  I don't get how files 
inherit (or don't) the permissions of their dirs.

Thanks!
Steve