What Command(s) List a User's System Permissions in Linux?

QUESTION: What Command(s) List a User's System Permissions in Linux?

CURRENT_OS: CentOS-5.X

MORE_INFO/QUESTIONS:

Looking for commands that will NOT be seen as aggressive or change the system, meaning that I attempt to change the system OR access file/dir that have standard permissions assigned to XYZ role to "see" if it's possible to do; root, su/sudo, etc.

Which distro have the same command syntax? For example: (RHEL / Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora), (Debian / Ubuntu Linux), BSD, etc. -- NOTE: This list is NOT in any order, it's just a example, and I'm not looking for comments on which distro is better, just the commands requested.

Thank you!!

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RECENT_UPDATE (1): I want to know if the user I'm currently signed in as has rights as root, su/sudo, etc. -- I'm not a Linux person, if I was on WIN-XP the answer would be to go to "START >> CONTROL PANEL >> USER ACCOUNTS" and I would see the system rights that user has; Admin, limited, etc. There other ways, but that's just an example. If there is a better way to ask the question, let me know. What I'm NOT looking for is what permissions I have on a file/folder/etc, I want to type a command-line and get info on the current users system rights, if that makes sense. Thanks!!

RECENT_UPDATE (2): Rewrote the question, posted it to stack-x-superuser, getting better responses: https://superuser.com/questions/197878/how-to-i-document-user-rights-on-an-existing-linux-system

Solution 1:

The groups command will show you what groups the user belongs to, which is about as close as you can get. Essentially, this is the same as with Windows, but Windows has nice friendly named groups like "Administrators", where as Linux has less obvious group names like "wheel".