chmod files only in all subdirectories

Question

Please someone assist me with chmod, I have the following file structure

-dir1
--file1
--file2
--dir1a
---file1a1
---file1a2
--dir1b
---file1b1
---file1b2

How do I chmod 655 to all files under dir1 and all subdir? So all files will have 655 permission and all dir will remain as they were.

Thank you

score 157 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 04 '17 at 10:21

157

Better to use

find . -type f -exec chmod 655 -- {} +

The other proposed solution from @sagarchalise will not work if filenames contain spaces or start with a dash.

edited Apr 04 '17 at 10:21

Community

answered Aug 24 '11 at 11:52

enzotib

21

Relatedly, to chmod all directories you can use `find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +` to change all directories to 755. – Kris Harper Aug 24 '11 at 13:02
4

What is the + for? – Brettski Jan 27 '17 at 22:14
6

@Brettski: the `+` sign is expanded by `find` to the list of the file paths (or part of it, if too long). – enzotib Jan 28 '17 at 07:44
4

What is the -- for? – Tomilov Anatoliy Dec 04 '17 at 11:32
4

The `--` indicates the end of command line options. This prevents a file starting with a hyphen from being interpreted as a command line option as it would come after the `--`. – Tim Tisdall Mar 01 '19 at 20:43

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 02 '21 at 05:31

11

I think going inside dir1 and

find . -type f | xargs chmod 655

will do the trick.

Or this version, which supports file names with spaces:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 655

edited Dec 02 '21 at 05:31

Steve Bennett

answered Aug 24 '11 at 11:36

sagarchalise

this works too but i've got some warning with "No such file or directory" – netic Aug 27 '11 at 02:39
@manetic: it depends, as said in my answer, on filenames containing spaces. – enzotib Aug 27 '11 at 05:51
4

For completeness, changing it to find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 655 would fix the space issue I believe, although @enzotib's answer is more concise – matt freake Aug 20 '15 at 10:22
what matt freake said – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Apr 04 '17 at 10:28

2 Answers2