[Python-ideas] More friendly access to chmod

[Andrew Barnert]

On Jan 11, 2016, at 02:23, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> In the context of Python as a cross-platform language, it's also
> important to remember that POSIX-style user/group/other permissions
> are only one form of file level access control - depending on your
> filesystem and OS, there will be a range of others.

Well, not a _huge_ range; as far as I know, the only things you're ever likely to run into besides POSIX permissions or a simple read-only flag are ACLs*. But that's still enough of a range to worry about...


* Yes, NT and POSIX ACLs aren't quite identical, and the POSIX standard was never completed and there are some minor differences between the Linux and BSD implementations, and OS X confused things by using the NT design with a POSIX-ish API and completely unique tools, so using ACLs portably isn't trivial. But, except for the problem of representing ACLs for users who don't exist on the system, they're pretty much equivalent for almost anything you care about at the application level.