Re: -e and permission denied

[victor]

On Friday, October 4, 2013 3:24:35 AM UTC+4, Eric Blake wrote:
> If you don't have access, then you cannot tell whether the file exists
> or not.  So you might as well assume it does not exist, and write your
> script to error out if a user feeds you a name that you cannot access.

if you have access:
- if file exists - backup, if file does not exist - all ok.

if you don't have access:
- you are not sure if file exists or no, throw error just in case (to ask user 
to fix permission or file list)

Command like "find" warns about permission denied errors, so, probably "find" 
programmers found a case when not exists vs unaccessible is matters.

Also, sometimes -e reports that file exists even if it's unreadable (example 
below), so one might have expiration that his script properly
cathes IO errors.



======
#!/bin/bash

# cleanup
chmod -R 777 X
rm -rf X
#/cleanup

mkdir X
mkdir X/Y
touch X/Y/file
touch X/f

chmod 000 X/Y
chmod 000 X/f

cat X/Y/file || echo FAIL1
cat X/Y/notafile || echo FAIL2
cat X/f || echo FAIL3

if [ -e X/f ]; then
echo X/f exists
fi

if [ -e X/Y/file ]; then
echo X/Y/file exists
fi

if [ -e X/Y/notafile ]; then
echo X/Y/notafile exists
fi

find X
======

======
cat: X/Y/file: Permission denied
FAIL1
cat: X/Y/notafile: Permission denied
FAIL2
cat: X/f: Permission denied
FAIL3
X/f exists
X
X/f
X/Y
find: `X/Y': Permission denied
======