Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:

>   > > Can you please add handling of the 'X' format?

> ls -l data.o
> -rw-------    1 dann     dann   143196 Sep 10 07:39 data.o
>
> M-x set-file-modes RET data.o RET a+rX RET
>
> ls -l data.o
> -rw-r--r--    1 dann     dann   143196 Sep 10 07:39 data.o

And this is utterly fine, isn't it?

   $ la /dd/temp
-rw------- 1 micha micha 0 2007-09-10 17:23 /dd/temp
   $ chmod a+rX /dd/temp
-rw-r--r-- 1 micha micha 0 2007-09-10 17:23 /dd/temp

The X flags means that if some user (u g or o) had a `x' flag, the new
mode should have it too.

>   > The (info "(coreutils)Symbolic Modes") node doesn't know about that.  Do
>   > you mean the recursive feature of chmod?  In which case, I don't think
>   > it really is the job of `set-file-modes' to handle this.  
>
> My point is that if set-file-modes does not handle -R, it should not
> just ignore it.

And it doesn't :
  M-x set-file-modes RET /dd/temp RET -R RET
yields 
  file-modes-symbolic-to-number: Parse error in modes near `-R'

Don't you have this message?

-- 
 |   Michaël `Micha' Cadilhac       |   An error can become exact            |
 |   http://michael.cadilhac.name   |     as the one who committed it        |
 |   JID/MSN:                       |  made a mistake or not.                |
 `----  michael.cadilhac@gmail.com  |          -- Pierre Dac            -  --'