os.path.isdir strange behaviouring

[Erno Kuusela]

>>>>> "Aahz" == Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> writes:

    Aahz> But it's not performing any action on test or test2; it's
    Aahz> performing an action on the path /test/test2.  I believe it
    Aahz> actually uses the OS call stat(),

yep, strace says..

stat("/tmp/dir-with-mode-000/subdir", 0xbffff63c) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)

ie the stat call is reporting a failure to get information on that
path.

    Aahz> but that doesn't really matter; the point is that whatever
    Aahz> internal function gets called on the *entire* path returns
    Aahz> an error, therefore the path cannot be a directory.

but it is indeed a directory - the os is just telling the you that 
you are not permitted to have any information on that filesystem object
(including whether it exists).

  -- erno