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From: cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu (Roy M. Silvernail)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: DOS chmod
Message-ID: <kB46m1w162w@cybrspc>
Date: 31 Jul 90 09:38:55 GMT
Organization: Villa CyberSpace, Minneapolis, MN
Lines: 27

After trying out ms_sh (in conjunction with the Picnix utilities), I'm
pretty happy with its functionality. Mostly, I use it for unpacking
shars from the net. Therein lies a small problem...

It seems that many shars use chmod to check for a file's existance after
writing it, and they call chmod with Unix syntax. The Picnix chmod,
though, has a different syntax to allow it to control DOS attributes.
(the same is true of MKS chmod, I believe) The result is lots of error
messages from a shar, if not an outright failure, depending on how the
shar was assembled.

Rather than hand-edit all chmod calls in shars anymore (like I did for
dmake :-( ), I have written a version of chmod that duplicates Unix SYSV
syntax. My chmod doesn't handle DOS attributes, except for read-only,
but it _does_ accept octal permissions or symbolic permissions and
generally behaves like the Unix version. I have placed it in the public
domain.

I'll be submitting it to c.b.i.p as soon as I can find a good path from
me to Bill. In the meanwhile, I'll be happy to fulfill mail requests for
it. The uuencoded file is about 15k. Please include a known-good mail
path in your note, in case my reply function goes brain-dead.
--
    Roy M. Silvernail   | #include <stdio.h>                 | Does virtual
    now available at:   | main(){                            | reality need
 cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu |  float x=1;                        | swap space?
(cyberspace... be here!)|  printf("Just my $%.2f.\n",x/50);} | -- me