The version of chmod bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
[4] The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.
[6] Throughout this section, user refers to the owner of the file, as a reminder that the symbolic form of the command uses "u", to avoid confusion with "other".
To view the file mode, the ls or stat commands may be used: The r, w, and x specify the read, write, and execute access respectively.
Change permissions to permit the programmers update of a file: Since the setuid, setgid and sticky bits are not specified, this is equivalent to: The chmod command also accepts a finer-grained symbolic notation,[8] which allows modifying specific modes while leaving other modes untouched.
The symbolic mode is composed of three components, which are combined to form a single string of text: Classes of users are used to distinguish to whom the permissions apply.