So, what you are trying to say is that perl stores the value that stat returns as a binary, but when I printed it out perl converted it to decimal. OK I think I got that now, but this other bit of code you left, I'm not sure I fully understand. Is that leading character a zero in 040700 and if so what does it do? presumably it causes an octal comparison? I guess where I got the code I came up with was by 
 
mkdir($private_dir, 0700);
$mode = (stat($private_dir))[2];
print "stat[2] returned $mode for a value\n"

[download]
the value returned was 16832 which clearly wasn't an octal value. Could you explain to me a little bit about arbitrary base comparisons? I can't find any examples that I recognise. Also thank you for the bit o' wisdom on mailx, I didn't know it had that vunerability(sp).

In reply to RE: RE: RE: lock files vs. non-predictable file names by RuphSkunk
in thread lock files vs. non-predictable file names by RuphSkunk

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