That's just how the behavior of umask
is defined:
If -S is specified, the message shall be in the following format:
"u=%s,g=%s,o=%s\n",, ,
where the three values shall be combinations of letters from the set { r, w, x}; the presence of a letter shall indicate that the corresponding bit is clear in the file mode creation mask.
(from http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/umask.html)
It seems logical that being able to display the mask in both forms would be useful, though admittedly the umask(1)
man page is not terribly clear on what the -S
option does.