[Gllug] How to chmod selectively without writing a script

[Matthew Kirkwood]

On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Liad Bokovsky wrote:

> >find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;  # finds directories and applies chmod
> >find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;  # finds regular files and applies chmod
>
> as an old dog, I'm still using one of the old tricks I've learnt.
>
> find . -type d |xargs chmod 755  - for directories and sub-dirs'
> find . -type f |xargs chmod 644  - for files

You'll regret that if any of your filenames have
newlines in them.  Try:

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

However, here a new trick that even old dogs may
not have seen:

chmod -R u+w,og-w,a+rX .

It's not directly equivalent, but may actually
be a better fit.  "+X" does "set the x bit if
it's already set for anybody".  Unless your
permissions are badly busted, your directories
will probably have the x bit set for the owner
or group.  The above will also open up perms
on executables, which is useful if it's a build
tree or similar.

Matthew.


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