Mark Longridge: chmod 0744 bj Dave Horsfall: That has to be the world's oddest "chmod" command. ====== Not by a long shot. Recently, for reasons related both to NFS permissions and to hardware testing, I have occasionally been making directories with mode 753. At the place I worked 20 years ago, we wanted a directory into which anonymous ftp could write, so that people could send us files; but we didn't want it to become a place for creeps to stash their creepy files. I thought about the problem briefly, then made the directory with mode 0270, owned by the user used for anonymous ftp and by a group containing all the staff members allowed to receive files that way. That way creeps could deposit files but couldn't see what was there. I also told cron to run every ten minutes, changing the permissions of any file in that directory to 0060. Oh, and I had already maniacally (and paranoiacally) excised from ftpd the code allowing ftp to change permissions. I admit I can't think of a reason to use 744 offhand, since if you can read the file you can copy it and make the copy executable. But UNIX permissions can be used in so many interesting ways that I'm not willing to claim there is no such reason just because I can't see what it is. Norman Wilson Toronto ON