I am finding myself editing a lot of files that are read-only. I usually hit C-x C-q
to call toggle-read-only
. Then I hit C-x C-s
to save and get,
File foo.txt is write-protected; try to save anyway? (y or n)
After hitting y
, the file is saved and the permissions on the file remain read-only.
Is there a way to shorten this process and make it so that simply saving a file with C-x C-s does the whole thing without prompting? Should I look into inserting chmod
in before-save-hook
and after-save-hook
or is there a better way?
Adding a call to chmod
in before-save-hook
would be clean way to accomplish this. There isn't any setting you can change to avoid the permissions check.
Based on the follow-up question, it sounds like you'd like the files to be changed to writable by you automatically upon opening. This code does the trick:
(defun change-file-permissions-to-writable ()
"to be run from find-file-hook, change write permissions"
(when (not (file-writable-p buffer-file-name))
(chmod buffer-file-name (file-modes-symbolic-to-number "u+w" (nth 8 (file-attributes buffer-file-name))))
(if (not (file-writable-p buffer-file-name))
(message "Unable to make file writable."))))
(add-hook 'find-file-hook 'change-file-permissions-to-writable)
Note: When I tested it on my Windows machine, the file permissions didn't show up until I tried to save the buffer, but it worked as expected. I personally feel uneasy about this customization, but it's your Emacs. :)