Bashscripts.org

I'm sure it's not the most elegant way to do it but it seems to work well enough.
I was looking all over for something that could be stuck in a cron job to modify the permissions on any directory in a tree with the words "Do Not Modify" in the name. The idea is that it should make all of the files in those directories read only but preserve the permissions of the Directory itself and anything not in that "Do Not Modify" directory.
Here's what I came up with. Have at thee.

I think almost the same may be achieved with a shorter command.


It assumes that any files in directories with DNM in their names and their subdirectories are to become read-only. Files in other directories (even files with DNM in their names) will be untouched. As a bonus, this command works also if there are spaces in file names.

This is a small test. I marked with ★ the files affected by the command:

Does anyone know if it is possible to modify this script so that

1) It only changes permissions if the permissions are 644
2) It changes permissions in the DNM to 444, otherwise change the permissions to 755

I can see how it is possible to do the the second (I think) not so much the first.

> find . -wholename '*DNM*/*' -type f -perm 644 -print0 | ...



I don't know how to implement “otherwiseâ€￾ in a bash filter. I see two ways:

(a) change everything to 755, then fix perms in the DNM to 444 (bad: there is a moment when some files in DNM become 755)

(b) write the second command with an inversed predicate in find, something like

> find . -not -wholename '*DNM*/*' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755