On Fri, 23 Feb 2018, Stephen M. Webb wrote: > On 2018-02-23 02:51 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > i can't believe i've never noticed the 'X' (upper case) permission > > setting for the chmod command, explained thusly in the man page: > > > > "The letters rwxXst select file mode bits for the affected users: read > > (r), write (w), execute (or search for directories) (x), > > execute/search only if the file is a directory or already has execute > > permission for some user (X), set user or group ID on execution (s), > > restricted deletion flag or sticky bit (t)..." > > > > what is the rationale for that particular setting? what problem is > > it trying to solve? i'm just a bit puzzled. > > It lets you fix broken permissions easily. Imagine a quick "chmod > -R a+X ." on a home directory in which you unzipped some DOS files > which lack any POSIX permission to traverse the contained folders, > because DOS. ah, quite so, thanks. rday