Testing Accessibility
---------------------
These functions test for permission to access a file in specific
ways.
- Function: file-exists-p filename
This function returns `t' if a file named FILENAME appears to
exist. This does not mean you can necessarily read the file, only
that you can find out its attributes. (On Unix and GNU/Linux,
this is true if the file exists and you have execute permission on
the containing directories, regardless of the protection of the
file itself.)
If the file does not exist, or if fascist access control policies
prevent you from finding the attributes of the file, this function
returns `nil'.
- Function: file-readable-p filename
This function returns `t' if a file named FILENAME exists and you
can read it. It returns `nil' otherwise.
(file-readable-p "files.texi")
=> t
(file-exists-p "/usr/spool/mqueue")
=> t
(file-readable-p "/usr/spool/mqueue")
=> nil
- Function: file-executable-p filename
This function returns `t' if a file named FILENAME exists and you
can execute it. It returns `nil' otherwise. On Unix and
GNU/Linux, if the file is a directory, execute permission means
you can check the existence and attributes of files inside the
directory, and open those files if their modes permit.
- Function: file-writable-p filename
This function returns `t' if the file FILENAME can be written or
created by you, and `nil' otherwise. A file is writable if the
file exists and you can write it. It is creatable if it does not
exist, but the specified directory does exist and you can write in
that directory.
In the third example below, `foo' is not writable because the
parent directory does not exist, even though the user could create
such a directory.
(file-writable-p "~/foo")
=> t
(file-writable-p "/foo")
=> nil
(file-writable-p "~/no-such-dir/foo")
=> nil
- Function: file-accessible-directory-p dirname
This function returns `t' if you have permission to open existing
files in the directory whose name as a file is DIRNAME; otherwise
(or if there is no such directory), it returns `nil'. The value
of DIRNAME may be either a directory name or the file name of a
file which is a directory.
Example: after the following,
(file-accessible-directory-p "/foo")
=> nil
we can deduce that any attempt to read a file in `/foo/' will give
an error.
- Function: access-file filename string
This function opens file FILENAME for reading, then closes it and
returns `nil'. However, if the open fails, it signals an error
using STRING as the error message text.
- Function: file-ownership-preserved-p filename
This function returns `t' if deleting the file FILENAME and then
creating it anew would keep the file's owner unchanged.
- Function: file-newer-than-file-p filename1 filename2
This function returns `t' if the file FILENAME1 is newer than file
FILENAME2. If FILENAME1 does not exist, it returns `nil'. If
FILENAME2 does not exist, it returns `t'.
In the following example, assume that the file `aug-19' was written
on the 19th, `aug-20' was written on the 20th, and the file
`no-file' doesn't exist at all.
(file-newer-than-file-p "aug-19" "aug-20")
=> nil
(file-newer-than-file-p "aug-20" "aug-19")
=> t
(file-newer-than-file-p "aug-19" "no-file")
=> t
(file-newer-than-file-p "no-file" "aug-19")
=> nil
You can use `file-attributes' to get a file's last modification
time as a list of two numbers. Note:File Attributes.