[Pan-users] Re: compile ?

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:57:23
-0800:

> On 12/07/2008 David Shochat wrote:
>> No, that was a directory (as shown by the initial 'd'). For a
>> directory, the 'x' means search access (there is no such thing as
>> executing a directory). For an ordinary file, it would mean execute
>> access.
> 
> I sit corrected.  Live and learn.  Thank you.

Ummm...  I believe it's a matter of terminology.  x does normally mean 
execute access (think Windows *.exe).  Directories of course can't be 
"executed" in the normal sense, but on them, there's a fine distinction 
between "read" and (as used above) "search" or (as most old Unix/Linux 
folks will call it anyway) "execute" access.

As the book "Running Linux" (O'Reilly publishing, just about the best all 
around Linux tutorial book you'll find, in its fifth or possibly sixth 
printing by now) puts it, for anyone but an expert, on directories read 
and execute access should almost always be set together, because if you 
want one, you want the other.

But, to a Unix/Linux vet, on a directory, "execute" /means/ search 
access, they're one and the same and will often be used interchangeably.  
That's just the way the permissions work, and since it has always been 
that way, it is as I said, really a matter of terminology.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman