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(cvsclient.info)File Modes

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File Modes
==========

   A mode is any number of repetitions of

     MODE-TYPE = DATA

   separated by `,'.

   MODE-TYPE is an identifier composed of alphanumeric characters.
Currently specified: `u' for user, `g' for group, `o' for other (see
below for discussion of whether these have their POSIX meaning or are
more loose).  Unrecognized values of MODE-TYPE are silently ignored.

   DATA consists of any data not containing `,', `\0' or `\n'.  For
`u', `g', and `o' mode types, data consists of alphanumeric characters,
where `r' means read, `w' means write, `x' means execute, and
unrecognized letters are silently ignored.

   The two most obvious ways in which the mode matters are: (1) is it
writeable?  This is used by the developer communication features, and
is implemented even on OS/2 (and could be implemented on DOS), whose
notion of mode is limited to a readonly bit. (2) is it executable?
Unix CVS users need CVS to store this setting (for shell scripts and
the like).  The current CVS implementation on unix does a little bit
more than just maintain these two settings, but it doesn't really have
a nice general facility to store or version control the mode, even on
unix, much less across operating systems with diverse protection
features.  So all the ins and outs of what the mode means across
operating systems haven't really been worked out (e.g. should the VMS
port use ACLs to get POSIX semantics for groups?).