umask 777

[Wesley Jessup]

/home/cis90/jessuwes $ umask 777
/home/cis90/jessuwes $ touch newer; mkdir newer
mkdir: cannot create directory `newer': File exists

But,

/home/cis90/jessuwes $ ls -F
bigfile dead.letter in2008 misc/ oct-08-2006/ uhistory_rsimms
bin/ docs/ lab02 new old userlist
cis90_lab4 edits/ letter newdir/ olddir/
class/ etc/ log newer poems/
classlist Hidden/ mbox newfile uhistory

I see the file newer, but no "/" indicating a directory called newer.

And,

/home/cis90/jessuwes $ ls -ld newer
---------- 1 jessuwes cis90 0 Oct 22 16:00 newer

I see no "d" bit set for newer.

Shouldn't the error have been on the creation of the file, and the directory created AND shown to the User as a directory?

Thanks,
Wes

[Rich Simms]

Hi Wes,

The ; allows you to place two commands on one line. They are executed the same way as if you had put them on two lines. Your first command creates a new file named newer. The second command fails as the file newer already exists.

mkdir makes new directories and fails if you give it the name of an existing file.

Here is same example without the ; with the same result:

[code]/home/cis90/simmsben $ umask 777
/home/cis90/simmsben $ touch newest
/home/cis90/simmsben $ mkdir newest
mkdir: cannot create directory `newest': File exists
/home/cis90/simmsben $ ls -l newest
---------- 1 simmsben cis90 0 Oct 23 07:34 newest
/home/cis90/simmsben $
[/code]

- Rich

[Michael Wicherski]

remember the unix filesystem doesn't distinguish between filenames and "foldernames" because folders (directories) are just files

[Wesley Jessup]

Thanks for the reply.

I see my problem now had been not following instructions. It should have been:

umask 777
touch newer; mkdir newerdir

-Wes

[Michael Wicherski]

(technically you never had to make a "newerdir" ; but if you did then it is just more practice and example of what happens with umask 777 ~.^ )