Recipe 9.3. Doing Batch Operations with chmod
9.3.1 Problem
You need to set permissions on all the files or a directory, or on
batches of files.
9.3.2 Solution
chmod supports operating on lists of files. You
can also use find or shell wildcards to generate
a list.
To make several files read-only for everyone, you can use
chmod as follows:
$ chmod 444 file.txt file2.txt file3.txt
To make all files in the current directory readable/writable, for the
file owner and group, without changing the directory permissions,
use:
$ find . -type f -exec chmod -v 660 { } \;
You can also change all files belonging to a particular user. This
example starts at the root of the filesystem:
$ find / -user terri -exec chmod -v 660 { } \;
You can set permissions for a directory and its contents, including
subdirectories, with the -R (recursive) flag:
$ chmod -R -v 755 /shared
This example makes all the .txt files in the
current directory readable/writable to the owner, and world-readable:
$ chmod -v 644 *.txt
To change all files in the current directory that begin with your
chosen string, use:
$ chmod -v 644 apt*
9.3.3 See Also
| 
