A Strange Behaviour!!!

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Can some-one give me a view to this :

I have a directory in an unix server, having permissions r-xr-xr-x .This directory is basically a source directory.
Now there is another directory basically the destination directory which has all the permissions.

Note:I log in as not the owner,but user of the group.

Is it possible to cp the files from the source directory to the destination directory.
(It was possible but i found it a bit erie as i didn't had the "w" permission in the source directory).

The second issue is I have a source directory with all the permissions.I have a file "abc" in that directory along with another file "def" in the same.
I created a 0 byte file "abc" in the destination directory having -r-xr-xr-x access but no 0 byte file for "def".
Now the erie thing is I am able to copy "abc" to the destination directory but not able to copy the file "def".

Note:I log in as not the owner,but user of the group.
WHY???

2

I thought you were writing in the destination?

What are the permissions of "def" in the source directory?

3

Hi porter,

In both the cases i was trying to copy to the destination.

And the permission for "def" can be -rwxrwxrwx or -r-xr-xr-x,tried with both.
the directory where i wanted to copy def had -r-xr-xr-x.
Hope i gave ur reply.
thanks....and the reason please?

4

To copy stuff, you read from the source and write to the destination. Which of these operations do you think should require write permission on the source? I guess you have never copied anything from a CD?

5

Hi Perdorabo,
Thanks for you comments but in the second case I think you may have noticed that I am trying to copy to the destination which doesn't have the write permissions.
So in that case would the CD rule persist ?

6

How to make things simple?

How about "You need write permissions to write."

Nothing odd or strange going on.