problem renaming/deleting files on other 'volumes' (OSX)

Terry Judd tsj at unimelb.edu.au
Wed Mar 9 22:38:26 EST 2005


It seems that if I ignore the rev 'rename' and 'delete' commands and go 
with the following shell commands - 'ditto' to copy and 'rm' to delete 
then the file is (effectively) renamed. Using 'mv' from the terminal 
doesn't work - which probably explains why  Rev's 'rename' fails. Any 
ideas?

Terry...



Hi Frank - this shouldn't be a problem as, according to a 'get info' on
the affected files and folders I'm the owner and have read and write
access. Having said that, I'm sometimes able to get rename working if I
set the permissions for all users to read and write - but as I said,
that's only sometimes.

I've just checked and I've checked 'ignore ownership' on the entire
volume. I'm at a bit of a loss.

Cheers,

Terry...

 > Do you also have write permission to the directory *containing* the
 > file(s) and/or folder(s) you are trying to rename and/or delete?
 >
 > Even if you are the owner of the containing directory, make sure you
 > have write permission (if you are the owner you can give this to
 > yourself), since you need that in order to rename/delete contained
 > items.
 >
 > Think of it this way (UNIX, and thus OS X, does):
 >
 > Since the 'directory' is essentially a 'list' of files and file
 > equivalents (directories, named pipes, "special files" representing
 > devices, etc.), the contained items are separate entities, but the
 > *name* of the item is stored in the directory itself, meaning that to
 > change the name you must be able to change the directory.
 >
 > In UNIX (and thus in OS X if using a UFS file system, the permissions
 > work the same if using HFS), it is possible for one file to be pointed
 > to by multiple directory entries; each directory entry pointing to the
 > file is called a "hard link," and the file maintains a count of how
 > many hard links point to it.  The file is deleted when that count
 > reaches zero.  So to delete a file, you delete the directory entry
 > pointing to it, which means modifying the directory.



More information about the use-livecode mailing list