Date: 2017jan29 OS: Linux Q. How can I follow a path and show permissions along the way? A. Use the namei command. Its man page says:

follow a pathname until a terminal point is found

Example:

namei -l /var/mail/myuser

f: /var/mail/myuser dr-xr-xr-x root root / drwxr-xr-x root root var lrwxrwxrwx root root mail -> spool/mail drwxr-xr-x root root spool drwxrwxr-x root mail mail -rw-rw---- myuser mail myuser