[texhax] Umasks, Permissions, and All That

[Thomas Schneider]

Herb:

> It may actually be the other way around. Using umask changes the
> system value from its default for the Terminal session

No, the system value is never changed by the user but one can set
one's own value in a shell.

Note: a Terminal is the graphical display on Mac OS X.  A shell is a
program running inside the Terminal that provides the command line. 
One can invoke another shell from a first shell.  If I'm in bash, I
can start a ksh then an sh and then (with control-d) break all of
these --- all within a single Terminal:

% bash
bash-3.2$ ksh
$ sh
sh-3.2$ exit
$ 
bash-3.2$ exit
%

> and the default value for personal files/folders is to inherit the
> system's value.

Yes.

Tom

  Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.
  Senior Investigator
  National Institutes of Health
  National Cancer Institute
  Center for Cancer Research
  Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory
  Molecular Information Theory Group
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  schneidt at mail.nih.gov
  http://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/(current link)
  http://alum.mit.edu/www/toms (permanent link)