[CoLoCo] permission question

[David L. Willson]

>   - Avoid numeric permissions.  Instead, use the more 
>     human-friendly representations, such as "g+w" to add group 
>     write access, or "a-x" to remove execute access from all.  
>     This looks like "chmod g+w myfile".

Let me +1 this recommendation.  Not just for beginners.  Add or remove the specific
perms you want to add or remove.  Only use numeric to "reset" the permission.

>   - Avoid recursive permissions.  They tend to cause more changes 
>     than necessary.  Doing a recursive chmod on /home/user is 
>     almost guaranteed to break things.

And +1 this, too.  Directories and files almost always need different permissions, so
"chmod -R" almost always causes problems.