Subject: Re: bug#9361: 24.0.50; default value of `dired-do-chmod'

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:45:05 +0300

> For another thing, the default value comes from the current permissions
> of the first file that is marked.  Privileging that file makes little or
> no sense when there are multiple files marked.  A better value would
> come from the _minimum_ permissions for each of u, g, o, among all the
> files marked.  A different argument could be made that the permissions
> of the current line should be used - to apply them without editing to
> all of the marked files.

It's intended to do something like this in 24.2 as described in
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/81414/focus=82988

> The best approach is not to provide any default value here.  A user of
> this Emacs command needs to know UNIX `chmod' anyway, and if known then
> it is not hard to type the permissions from scratch.

If you don't want the default value, just don't use it, don't type M-n.
But for those who like to reduce typing and remembering different
syntaxes it intentionally uses the most verbose and easy to remember syntax
that is closest to the syntax of modes displayed in the left column
of the Dired buffer.