Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>, 61708@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 21:40:21 +0000
>> From: Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>
>> 
>> 
>> >>> How one convert the output of (nth 8 (file-attributes "/home/user")) 
>> >>> to numeric mode?
>> >>
>> >> (file-modes "/home/user")
>> >
>> > Yes, thanks I know this one, what I want to convert is e.g. "-rwxr-x---" 
>> > to number.
>> >
>> 
>> (defun symbolic-mode-to-number (mode)
>>    (string-to-number
>>     (replace-regexp-in-string
>>      "[^0]" "1"
>>      (string-replace "-" "0" mode))
>>     2))
>
> Maybe we should have a knob in file-attributes or in
> file-attribute-modes to return the modes as either a number or in
> symbolic form suitable for file-modes-symbolic-to-number?

That's a good idea.

-- 
Thierry