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chmod LIST

Changes the permissions of a list of files. The first element of the list must be the numerical mode, which should probably be an octal number, and which definitely should not a string of octal digits: 0644 is okay, '0644' is not. Returns the number of files successfully changed. See also "oct", if all you have is a string.

$cnt = chmod 0755, 'foo', 'bar';
chmod 0755, @executables;
$mode = '0644'; chmod $mode, 'foo';      # !!! sets mode to
                                         # --w----r-T
$mode = '0644'; chmod oct($mode), 'foo'; # this is better
$mode = 0644;   chmod $mode, 'foo';      # this is best

You can also import the symbolic S_I* constants from the Fcntl module:

use Fcntl ':mode';

chmod S_IRWXU|S_IRGRP|S_IXGRP|S_IROTH|S_IXOTH, @executables;
# This is identical to the chmod 0755 of the above example.