file permissions

[Gareth Rosson]

Running Progress V8 on NT4, I am trying to check if I have write permission for an external file before opening it. However file-info:file-type always seems to contain a "W" even when I don't have write access.
Does anyone know of another way of checking this ?

 

[Simon Sweetman]

Thats a shame that it dosn't work - Not having any trouble with Progress 9.1C on windows 2000 or NT4.

You could try the GetFileAttributes API call:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/base/getfileattributes.asp

Still might be worth trying the latest progress patch and see if it's fixed.

 

[bendaluz2]

The reason that this doesnt appear to work is because it IS checking the file attributes, i.e. whether the file is marked read-only or not. Not whether a particular user has permission to write to the file, which is what i suspect you really need to find out.

 

[Simon Sweetman]

Of course, that makes perfect sense. So what is really needed is some method of verifying security access, not just examining the file read-only attribute.

 

[toby.Harman]

I consider this to be strange behaviour!

I'm not interested in whether the file is marked read only - I am only interested in what I can do with that file.

In the wonderful world of Unix Character environments, when I ask if a file is writable it knows I mean "is it writable by me".

Sorry - This seems EXTREMELY strange!

 

[bendaluz2]

In windows, the read only flag is separate to permissions. It is a legacy from DOS, which is not a multi-user o/s, so this was the the only way to protect a file. You can use windows api calls to determine the security settings of a file.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...leio/base/file_security_and_access_rights.asp

This should point you in the right direction

Hope it helps

 

[Gareth Rosson]

Resorted to a progress solution in the end
where v-file is the file I may not have permission to write to

OUTPUT TO VALUE(v-filepath).
RUN open-file (v-file).
OUTPUT CLOSE.
OS-DELETE VALUE(V-FILEPATH).

IF RETURN-VALUE = 'OK' THEN LEAVE.

PROCEDURE open-file:

DEF INPUT PARAM p-file AS CHAR.

OUTPUT STREAM dump-stream TO VALUE (p-file) APPEND.

RETURN "OK".
END.