Re: 23.0.60; on Mac OS X permissions of group-writable files are displayed with red w

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE>
> Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 21:11:49 +0200
> Cc: 
> 
> GNU Emacs explains to me (after following hypertext links from *Help*  
> buffers) that dired-perm-write face comes out of dired.el, from these  
> lines:
> 
> 	(defface dired-perm-write
> 	  '((((type w32 pc)) :inherit default)  ;; These default to rw-rw-rw.
> 	    ;; Inherit from font-lock-comment-delimiter-face since with min- 
> colors 8
> 	    ;; font-lock-comment-face is not colored any more.
> 	    (t (:inherit font-lock-comment-delimiter-face)))
> 	  "Face used to highlight permissions of group- and world-writable  
> files."
> 	  :group 'dired-faces
> 	  :version "22.2")
> 
> I am pretty sure that I neither have some MS stuff on my lap nor a PC  
> in use ... so why do I see these red w in drwxrwxr-x or -rw-rw-r-- ?

You see them precisely _because_ you never had any MS stuff on your
lap.  Look at the defface above: it says that on w32 and MSDOS (that's
what `pc' means) dired-perm-write face is identical to the default
face, whereas on all other systems it looks like
font-lock-comment-delimiter-face.

This feature is meant to make world-writable files to stand out on
systems where it isn't the default, presumably to alert you to
possible security holes.