>> Example (if possible):
>> --------------------------
>> $ chmod 777 -t 30 myfile.txt
>> # Grants full access to "myfile.txt" for 30 minutes
>> # After 30 minutes, permissions revert to their previous state
>$ chmod-t() { local m=$(stat -c %a "$2"); chmod "$1" "$2"; sleep ${3}m; chmod
>$m "$2"; }
>$ chmod-t 777 myfile.txt 30
Except that, of course, no one would ever do it like that.
The whole point is that you want the command to return immediately,
but have a background process/thread running to chmod it back.
Which means two things:
1) It probably has to be done at the C level, not the shell level,
in order to have an aesthetically pleasing implementation. Yes, I
know you can use "&" at the end of the command line to
"background" it, but that is ugly (for a variety of reasons).
2) It'll (obviously) never get done in mainline coreutils "chmod",
but there's nothing stopping OP from doing his own version to do it.
Note also: Although the idea seems odd, and most people's intuitive
reaction is/was "WTF?", I actually get where OP is coming from and
wish that there was some more direct way to accomplish this. But Unix
being Unix, there just isn't. I would imagine that OP (or an
associate) got bitten by this once and therefore wishes there were
some built-in way to avert it in future.
The problem is that unless it was builtin to the "chmod" command,
people won't use it - that's the "human factor" that has been ignore
so far in the responses.
P.S. Oh, and there is no bug here. This thread belongs in "coreutils"
(not "bug-coreutils").
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