ls : operation not permitted

try this, for me it works:

1) put Terminal.app in Security & Privacy (Full Disk Access)

2) open Terminal.app

3) type xterm inside Terminal.app -> this will lunch XQuartz

4) if now you open xterm from XQuartz you can "ls" everything.

To me, the whole point of using xterm is as a replacement for Terminal.app. So running through Terminal.app defeats the purpose.

I found that a more direct solution was to give "Full Disk Access" to /bin/bash. This is a bit counter-intuitive, since I actually use /bin/tcsh for my shell (yeah, I know, I'm a luddite). I'm not sure whether bash is involved because my tcsh is a descendant of a bash process, or because the ls command is using bash in some way. But it is certainly true that I can toggle whether "ls ~/Documents" works by checking/unchecking bash in the Full Disk Access panel.

It’d usually be enabling “full disk access” permissions for Xterm in System Preferences > Security. Add the Xterm.app there, if that's not what you’ve done. If that’’s not working, check if you’re logged in as a different user? Check the permissions (ls -aled@ or ilk) on the ~Documents directory, too.

xterm is not an app, there is no such thing as "Xterm.app". xterm is an X11 terminal emulator with runs within XQuartz.app, which is why @BenKil describes the failed solution that he tried.

I have also tried adding /opt/X11/bin/xterm to the "Full Disk Access" permissions, but that did not help either. Any other ideas?