Permissions Confusion

[Tyger]

If I have a text file in the cgi-bin directory that I do not want to be readable or writable to anyone apart from myself via FTP when logged into my web space, or a script in the same cgi-bin directory, is this done with permissions?

I have never found a good explanation of what permissions are about. Do they only relate to the unix server? In other words, could I have a text file in cgi-bin with permissions set to 0777 that could still be protected from outside access (ie: someone typing in the path in the address bar of their internet browser and reading it through that)?

My perl script needs to be able to write to the text file, although it is not the owner, but I want the text file to be unaccessable to just anyone who happens to knows the path.

 

[Grahf]

If you don't want anyone to be able to look at your file from the web browser, use the extension .cgi or .pl instead of .txt

It won't be a real CGI or Perl file, but browsers won't read it as they would a text file. Your script will read it the same way as the text file.