Re: -perm +... What should still work, what should not?

[James Youngman]

On Sun, Oct 02, 2005 at 07:20:56PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:

> My problem is in deciding which kind of strings "has a
> meaning in POSIX". e.g. +u+x or +g=w,u+x or ++s.

I also.  The real answer is that if gnulib/lib/modechange.c
(mode_compile) likes it, then we believe that it has a POSIX meaning
as-is.  Otherwise, we interpret an initial '+' as being equivalent to
'/'.  So we rely on mode_compile() to be a faithful implementation of
the POSIX mode string.  Paul (re-?) wrote that implementation and
suggested this strategy for backward compatibility.  It seems
reasonable to me, since "find -perm" does need to be POSIX-compatible.

However, I accept that the current documentation could be more
helpful.  It just codifies my current understanding of the state of
things.  Sadly, like the documentation, that could be improved :(

Regards,
James.