mkdir -p and -m cannot be used together

[Jon Stanley]

OK, I've never really noticed this before, but it just bit me :)
Trying to make a directory structure with mode 755, when your umask is
for example 0007, doesn't produce the desired results for the parent
directories:

address@hidden src]# ./mkdir -m 755 -p /tmp/a/b/c
address@hidden src]# ls -lR /tmp/a
/tmp/a:
total 4
drwxrwx--- 3 root root 4096 Oct 31 17:17 b

/tmp/a/b:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 31 17:17 c

/tmp/a/b/c:
total 0
address@hidden src]#

Is there some reason for this? I've verified this in my distros
coreutils, as well as coreutils-6.9 (above).  I'd think this would be
a FAQ. but I found no other references to this aberrant behavior
anywhere :)