chmod -r uses symbolic mode. Specifically it removes read permissions for the file. Other forms include w for write and x for executable. + can be used to add permission.
ls -r actually lists entries in reverse order! It needs -R as well.
cp and rm accept either.
Looking at some man pages the only commands I found where -R didn’t work were scp and gzip where it doesn’t do anything, and rsync where it’s “use relative path names”.
(Caveat: BSD utils might be different, who knows what those devils get up to!)
chmod -r
uses symbolic mode. Specifically it removes read permissions for the file. Other forms include w for write and x for executable. + can be used to add permission.https://ss64.com/bash/chmod.html
Aha! I didn’t get that you meant the issue was accidentally using
-r
instead of-R
since both you and OP wrote the upper case one.I’m a lot more used to
-R
so I instead get caught off by commands where that means something other than recursive :)I mostly use symbolic mode and honestly don’t get why everyone else seems to use octal all the time.
People probably confuse it with tools like
cp
,rm
,ls
, etc as they use-r
for file recursion.ls -r
actually lists entries in reverse order! It needs-R
as well.cp
andrm
accept either.Looking at some man pages the only commands I found where
-R
didn’t work werescp
andgzip
where it doesn’t do anything, andrsync
where it’s “use relative path names”.(Caveat: BSD utils might be different, who knows what those devils get up to!)