Martin v. Löwis wrote: >> Now, ironically, I'm confused by your recap :) What I meant to say was >> that the os.access function as implemented under Windows returns False >> if the path in question (say, "x:\someones-private-docs\diary.doc") was >> inaccessible to the process invoking os.access by virtue of file >> system permissions. (Or, even, that it simply didn't exist). > > Isn't that exactly the question that access() is trying to answer? > (whether the file is inaccessible?) > Then the reader could say "if it's inaccessible, return False, > otherwise, return True". It suggests that we already have a mechanism > to determine accessibility.
Up to a point: this meets the case where we fail to access the file at all (for read or write or whatever). But what about where we can read the directory entry, and the read-only attribute isn't set? At present, we'll return True to a W_OK access check in these circs, but this user might in fact be denied write access by the ACLs. (In fact, they might even be denied read access, since I imagine we only need access to the directory entry to check the attributes). Have I missed something? BTW I can't see a tutorial in the AccessCheck docs here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374815.aspx or in the SDK help file. Were you referring to a different set of docs? I'm girding my loins to provide a patch if I can! TJG -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list