From: "Tim Van Holder" To: Cc: "Eli Zaretskii" Subject: Re: .files on servers are perceived as readonly Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 18:58:50 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-reply-to: <6480-Sat09Jun2001184538+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk > > > Could you please explain what exactly is wrong with that? Why did it > > > annoy you that .cvsignore was shown as not writable? > > Because it's a writable file. > > Not really: > > D:\usr\djgpp\data>touch foobarh > > D:\usr\djgpp\data>attrib +H foobarh > > D:\usr\djgpp\data>del foobarh > File not found The key point here is that's it ENOFILE, and not EACCESS that is reported. The programs simply don't SEE the files, but they CAN edit them. C:\>attrib -r msdos.sys RHS__ -> _HS__ C:\MSDOS.SYS C:\>edit msdos.sys -> edits just fine, doesn't even complain about it being a hidden or system file. Seems to have the side effect of clearing hidden & system but that is probably just a MS bug. C:\>attrib +r msdos.sys ___A_ -> R__A_ C:\MSDOS.SYS So I'd expect the same behaviour as on DOS: hidden files should not be seen in directory walks by default (as is the case now), and destructive commands such as rm should by default pretend not to find them. The files should be readonly iff the readonly bit is set. > > Wouldn't it annoy you if emacs considered > > .emacs read-only, just because it somehow got its hidden bit set? > > No. If someone set that bit, I'd surely want to know that there's > something special about the file. I certainly would _not_ want to see > it with only the normal "rw-r--r--" mode bits. I certainly see your point, but I have a hard time agreeing with it for hidden files. Making system files look read-only is fine, but for hidden files, I'd say it was excessive. Perhaps for hidden files, you could mask out the group & others bits (i.e. return 0600 instead of 0666). That would make them appear different enough in ls; not sure how it would affect other stat-using programs though. But it's certainly no less meaningful that reporting them as read-only when they're not. And for system files, you could add the sticky bit (that seems least likely to cause problems with Unixy apps, but I'm not sure).