os.access() under windows

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Up to a point: this meets the case where we fail to access
> the file at all (for read or write or whatever). But what
> about where we can read the directory entry, and the
> read-only attribute isn't set? At present, we'll return
> True to a W_OK access check in these circs, but this user
> might in fact be denied write access by the ACLs. (In fact,
> they might even be denied read access, since I imagine we
> only need access to the directory entry to check the
> attributes).

That's my question exactly: what do you need to do
GetFileAttributes successfully?

In a POSIX world, you need read permission on the directory.
In Windows, with the "bypass-traversal-check" privilege,
you only need read permission on the directory if you want
to list it, not to access a file in the directory. Is it
actually possible for GetFileAttributes to ever fail for
security reasons?

> BTW I can't see a tutorial in the AccessCheck docs here:
> 
>   http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374815.aspx
> 
> or in the SDK help file. Were you referring to a different
> set of docs? 

I meant

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379648.aspx

and thought it was linked from AccessCheck, but
it apparently isn't.

Regards,
Martin