Can the Unix list command 'ls' output numerical chmod permissions?
it almost can ..
ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/) \ *2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'
Closest I can think of (keeping it simple enough) is stat, assuming you know which files you're looking for. If you don't, * can find most of them:
/usr/bin$ stat -c '%a %n' *755 [755 a2p755 a2ps755 aclocal...It handles sticky, suid and company out of the box:
$ stat -c '%a %n' /tmp /usr/bin/sudo1777 /tmp4755 /usr/bin/sudo