After I apply chmod -R to a directory, permissions are changed for everything within (files and directories). How can I add execute/search (x) permissions to directories without modifying the files?
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2 Answers
You can use find.
find ./ -type d -execdir chmod 750 {} +
Where 750 is the mode you'd like to apply and "./" is the directory you will recursively search.
EDIT: Thanks to @Gilles and find(1), I've revised this for additional security and performance.
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@Gilles Thanks, it isn't too frequent that I learn something new about Unix tools :-) That is awesome. Also, now reading the find documentation, one should really use -execdir instead. Commented Jan 15, 2011 at 0:12
In this particular case you can use X instead of x which only adds the bits to directories or files which already have the executable bit set for some user (i.e. chmod -R +X my_dir).
In general (e.g. if you wanted to make all directories readable without affecting the files), you could either use find with -type d or if you're using zsh (or bash 4 with shopt -s globstar) the **/ glob (both without passing the -R flag to chmod).
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1"use X instead of x which only adds the bits to directories or files which already have the executable bit set for some user" - Thanks! I've missed this thing a lot!– IvanCommented Jan 15, 2011 at 4:51