umask(1p) — Linux manual page

PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

UMASK(1P)               POSIX Programmer's Manual              UMASK(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       umask — get or set the file mode creation mask

SYNOPSIS         top

       umask [-S] [mask]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The umask utility shall set the file mode creation mask of the
       current shell execution environment (see Section 2.12, Shell
       Execution Environment) to the value specified by the mask
       operand. This mask shall affect the initial value of the file
       permission bits of subsequently created files. If umask is called
       in a subshell or separate utility execution environment, such as
       one of the following:

           (umask 002)
           nohup umask ...
           find . -exec umask ... \;

       it shall not affect the file mode creation mask of the caller's
       environment.

       If the mask operand is not specified, the umask utility shall
       write to standard output the value of the file mode creation mask
       of the invoking process.

OPTIONS         top

       The umask utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following option shall be supported:

       -S        Produce symbolic output.

       The default output style is unspecified, but shall be recognized
       on a subsequent invocation of umask on the same system as a mask
       operand to restore the previous file mode creation mask.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operand shall be supported:

       mask      A string specifying the new file mode creation mask.
                 The string is treated in the same way as the mode
                 operand described in the EXTENDED DESCRIPTION section
                 for chmod.

                 For a symbolic_mode value, the new value of the file
                 mode creation mask shall be the logical complement of
                 the file permission bits portion of the file mode
                 specified by the symbolic_mode string.

                 In a symbolic_mode value, the permissions op characters
                 '+' and '-' shall be interpreted relative to the
                 current file mode creation mask; '+' shall cause the
                 bits for the indicated permissions to be cleared in the
                 mask; '-' shall cause the bits for the indicated
                 permissions to be set in the mask.

                 The interpretation of mode values that specify file
                 mode bits other than the file permission bits is
                 unspecified.

                 In the octal integer form of mode, the specified bits
                 are set in the file mode creation mask.

                 The file mode creation mask shall be set to the
                 resulting numeric value.

                 The default output of a prior invocation of umask on
                 the same system with no operand also shall be
                 recognized as a mask operand.

STDIN         top

       Not used.

INPUT FILES         top

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       umask:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
                 Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
                 Internationalization Variables for the precedence of
                 internationalization variables used to determine the
                 values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
                 of all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of
                 sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for
                 example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte
                 characters in arguments).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       When the mask operand is not specified, the umask utility shall
       write a message to standard output that can later be used as a
       umask mask operand.

       If -S is specified, the message shall be in the following format:

           "u=%s,g=%s,o=%s\n", <owner permissions>, <group permissions>,
               <other permissions>

       where the three values shall be combinations of letters from the
       set {r, w, x}; the presence of a letter shall indicate that the
       corresponding bit is clear in the file mode creation mask.

       If a mask operand is specified, there shall be no output written
       to standard output.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    The file mode creation mask was successfully changed, or no
             mask operand was supplied.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       Since umask affects the current shell execution environment, it
       is generally provided as a shell regular built-in.

       In contrast to the negative permission logic provided by the file
       mode creation mask and the octal number form of the mask
       argument, the symbolic form of the mask argument specifies those
       permissions that are left alone.

EXAMPLES         top

       Either of the commands:

           umask a=rx,ug+w

           umask 002

       sets the mode mask so that subsequently created files have their
       S_IWOTH bit cleared.

       After setting the mode mask with either of the above commands,
       the umask command can be used to write out the current value of
       the mode mask:

           $ umask
           0002

       (The output format is unspecified, but historical implementations
       use the octal integer mode format.)

           $ umask -S
           u=rwx,g=rwx,o=rx

       Either of these outputs can be used as the mask operand to a
       subsequent invocation of the umask utility.

       Assuming the mode mask is set as above, the command:

           umask g-w

       sets the mode mask so that subsequently created files have their
       S_IWGRP and S_IWOTH bits cleared.

       The command:

           umask -- -w

       sets the mode mask so that subsequently created files have all
       their write bits cleared. Note that mask operands -r, -w, -x or
       anything beginning with a <hyphen-minus>, must be preceded by
       "--" to keep it from being interpreted as an option.

RATIONALE         top

       Since umask affects the current shell execution environment, it
       is generally provided as a shell regular built-in. If it is
       called in a subshell or separate utility execution environment,
       such as one of the following:

           (umask 002)
           nohup umask ...
           find . -exec umask ... \;

       it does not affect the file mode creation mask of the environment
       of the caller.

       The description of the historical utility was modified to allow
       it to use the symbolic modes of chmod.  The -s option used in
       early proposals was changed to -S because -s could be confused
       with a symbolic_mode form of mask referring to the S_ISUID and
       S_ISGID bits.

       The default output style is unspecified to permit implementors to
       provide migration to the new symbolic style at the time most
       appropriate to their users. A -o flag to force octal mode output
       was omitted because the octal mode may not be sufficient to
       specify all of the information that may be present in the file
       mode creation mask when more secure file access permission checks
       are implemented.

       It has been suggested that trusted systems developers might
       appreciate ameliorating the requirement that the mode mask
       ``affects'' the file access permissions, since it seems access
       control lists might replace the mode mask to some degree. The
       wording has been changed to say that it affects the file
       permission bits, and it leaves the details of the behavior of how
       they affect the file access permissions to the description in the
       System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       Chapter 2, Shell Command Language, chmod(1p)

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8,
       Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

       The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017, umask(3p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                         UMASK(1P)

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