chmod go=u-w (was Re: Testing execute permission from csh)

[Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge]

In article <19486 at adm.BRL.MIL>, Kemp at DOCKMASTER writes:
| I have run across a bug in either csh or my understanding of it (almost
| certainly the latter).  I have a directory of files that were read from
| a tape with no world permissions:
| 
|  -rw-r-----  root   a.c
|  -rw-r-----  root   b.c
|  -rwxr-x---  root   a.out
| 
| I want to change all the files to have world read permission, and all
| the executables to have world execute.  I tried the following in csh as
| root:
| 
|  # foreach f (*)
|  ? if -x $f chmod o+x $f
|  ? end
| 
| and it selected EVERY file, not just those with execute permission.  (I
| actually used echo instead of chmod while testing).  If I do the same
| thing as a normal user, it works properly.

What I do frequently in my public bin is:

  chmod go=u-w *

which says "chmod these files for group and other to whatever it is
*for me* minus the 'write'".  (I put files that need to be publicly
writable somewhere else.)

So rw------- becomes rw-r--r-- and rwx------ becomes rwxr-xr-x,
automagically.

Ain't chmod fun?
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