Single permission OS X ACL entries

Question

I'm just trying to understand what happens when you apply a new ACL entry (specifying only a single permission) to a directory or file through the terminal.

For example if I were to run this to allow write access for all users in the developers group for all the found files and directories in the current directory:

sudo find . -exec chmod +a "developers allow write"

Would that then use a set of defaults to determine whether the user is able to say list the files in a directory, or would it fall back to checking against the traditional POSIX execute permission?

Answer 1

An action, say listing the files, only uses the ACL if you have specifically defined that permission as either allow or deny. Otherwise the normal POSIX permissions are used.

Thinking back I don't know why I didn't click on to that, it makes perfect sense.