chmod problems

teacup · 04-20-2003, 11:08 PM

I want to change the permisions of files in a folder and its subfolders. I don't want the changes to affect the folders themselves. So I did:

chmod -R 600 *.txt
chmod: getting attributes of `*.txt': No such file or directory

grr...

I can do a:

chmod -R 600 *

but that will screw up all of my folders inside as well (making them non-executable). How do I do this?

DoubleLetter · 04-21-2003, 01:33 AM

The error: "`*.txt': No such file or directory" occurs when there are no .txt files in your CURRENT directory.

You'll have to write a bash script for the functionality you require, applying the chmod command to only files...

teacup · 04-21-2003, 12:03 PM

That's what I was afraid of... Thanks.

nxny · 04-21-2003, 12:53 PM

What are the permissions for your *.txt files? If they dont have an executable bit set for any user ( for example rw-r--r-- ) you can

chmod -R u=rwX,g=,o= *

and be done with it.

teacup · 04-21-2003, 03:25 PM

No no... the problem is they are all executable and I don't want them executable. I wanted to be able to quickly make all of them in not executable while still leaving the permisions of other files inside intact.

whansard · 04-21-2003, 05:02 PM

# find . -name "*.txt" -exec chmod 600 {} \;

teacup · 04-21-2003, 07:33 PM

No, that says missing arguement to exec.

whansard · 04-21-2003, 07:52 PM

you probably made a typo.
the {} replaces the results of the find command there,
then a space then backslash and no space before the
semi-colon
i run a command similar to that all the time.
a lot of times it's hard to see the spaces and it's
hard to know which spaces are important.
here, the really important one is lack of space
between the \and the;

yea, i just checked it.
if i add a space between the backslash and semi-colon
i get the error "missing argument to -exec"
take it out and it works.

teacup · 04-21-2003, 10:59 PM

That was it. Woot! Out of curiosity what is the syntactical purpose of the "\;" ?

Thanks.

whansard · 04-21-2003, 11:35 PM

i think the semicolon signifies the end of the command
for -exec, and the backslash is to keep the semicolon
from being interpreted otherwise.
just unix weirdness