Recursive chmod to 644 where current permission equals 755

Question

I copied a project directory to a portable hard disk, wiped my laptop and copied the project back, but now git reports loads of changes due to files that previously had 644 permission changing to 755.

I could recursively chmod all files and directories to 644, but then I get a load more changes in git (so looks like not everything was 644 previously). Is there any way to chmod only files that have 755 permissions?

Answer 1

The documentation for find (see man find) writes,

-perm mode File's permission bits are exactly mode (octal or symbolic). [...] See the EXAMPLES section for some illustrative examples.

So you can match files and change their permissions like this

find path/to/files -type f -perm 0755 -exec echo chmod 0644 {} +

Remove the echo when you are comfortable that it's showing you what you expect, and run it again.

Answer 2

If it is a git repository's worktree, just checking out the files should fix their permissions. I.e., do a git checkout -f.