[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #63265] rmdir fails to remove directory containing read-only files

[Philip Nienhuis]

Follow-up Comment #11, bug #63265 (project octave):

> Any opinions?  (on changing unlink's behavior)
PMFJI
I suppose there's quite a bit of Octave m-file code around that explicitly or
implicitly (= invoked by other functions) relies on the current behavior of
'unlink' - i.e., that it won't delete read-only files. So be careful changing
that.

Rather than change unlink's _default_ behavior, we can change rmdir to be able
to convey a flag to unlink to instruct it to also delete read-only files.
After all it is rmdir that seems Matlab-incompatible, not unlink.

>From the discussion it looks like the OP (and some commenters here) were
deceived by rmdir's maybe too general error message "Permission denied" -
maybe rmdir should more precisely tell that the files-to-be-deleted have a
read-only attribute set; to be distinguished form "file in use" or so. Or
rather tell exactly which file(s) couldn't be deleted (or just the first one
to avoid a long printout) - that may help avoiding a lot of effort trying to
recreate the issue.

Also, IIUC the installed PsychToolbox has an svn folder inside; why is that
needed in the first place? I can't imagine it is used by the PsychToolbox
code.


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