chmod and permissions weirdness

This test report has been making me scratch my chin. It boils down to something like this:

SKIP: {
  chmod 0222, $filename;

  skip "chmodded 0222 but file is still -r", 1 if -r $filename;

  eval { IO::File->open($filename, '<') or die "fail"; };
  like($@, qr/fail/, "we can't open an unreadable file");
}

This works everywhere I’ve tried it, including with Strawberry Perl on Windows XP. I haven’t tried it myself under Cygwin. I’m not really concerned with this specific problem per se, because I know I can contact Chris (the tester) and ask for help. I’m more wondering, in general: huh? Is this sort of thing a Cygwin weirdness that I should know about for portability’s sake? Does I need to always use filetest.pm?

Written on August 21, 2007