Thanks for the response... My issue isn't the number of available bits and Unix parity.. Coming from a Unix background I do understand the vagaries of Win32 vs. *nix file systems.. it is rather and issue of chmod working as advertised in the context of the File::Find helper function as documented on CPAN (perldocs)... If I use chmod on its own it behaves as expected (only setting the owner bits ala Win32)... If I wrap chmod in a helper function, as in my posted example, and pass the function pointer to File::Find no bits are set at all... The function is getting called.. but no effect.