{"id":71193,"date":"2004-10-19T17:27:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-19T17:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2004\/10\/19\/how-can-i-change-a-read-only-file-to-a-read-write-file\/"},"modified":"2004-10-19T17:27:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-19T17:27:00","slug":"how-can-i-change-a-read-only-file-to-a-read-write-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-change-a-read-only-file-to-a-read-write-file\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Change a Read-only File to a Read-write File?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey, \n

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change a read-only file to a read-write file?

— WR<\/P>\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/A> \n

Hey, WR. We don\u2019t mean to shock you, but how can you change a read-only file to a read-write file? Why, by using a script, of course!<\/P>\n

We know: you never saw that coming, did you?<\/P>\n

As a matter of fact, you can use this<\/I> script, which changes the file C:\\Scripts\\Test.vbs from a read-only file to a read-write file:<\/P>

Const ReadOnly = 1<\/p>\n
Set objFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)\nSet objFile = objFSO.GetFile(“C:\\Scripts\\Test.vbs”)<\/p>\n
If objFile.Attributes AND ReadOnly Then\n    objFile.Attributes = objFile.Attributes XOR ReadOnly\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
You\u2019re right: maybe we should<\/I> explain what\u2019s going on here. We begin by setting the value of the constant ReadOnly to 1 (more on this monetarily). We then create an instance of the FileSystemObject, and use the GetFile method to bind to the file C:\\Scripts\\Test.vbs. So far, so good.<\/P>\n
This is where it starts to get weird, or at least a little unusual. The Read-only attribute is stored as part of a \u201cbitmask\u201d along with other file attributes such as Hidden (value of 2, which indicates whether the file is a hidden file) and System (value of 4, which indicates whether the file is a system file). In a bitmask (loosely defined as a collection of attributes stored as a single value) individual attributes can be likened to switches, switches that can be either on or off. If the switch with value of 1 is on, then the file is read-only; if the switch with the value of 1 is off, then the file is read-write.<\/P>\n
That just leaves one question: how the heck do you determine whether one of these switches is on or off? A complete explanation of that is well beyond the scope of this column, but the simple answer is that you use the bitwise AND operator. Notice the following odd-looking line in the script:<\/P>
If objFile.Attributes AND ReadOnly Then\n<\/PRE>\n
Believe it or not, this line is checking to see if the ReadOnly attribute (with a value of 1) is on. What if we wanted to see if the file was a hidden file? Well, in that case (and assuming we set the value of a constant named Hidden to 2), we\u2019d use this line of code:<\/P>
If objFile.Attributes AND Hidden Then\n<\/PRE>\n
Basically the AND operator can be read like this: \u201cIf we\u2019re looking at the Attributes of the file and of the ReadOnly switch is on, then this is a read-only file and this If statement is True. If the ReadOnly switch is off, then this If statement is False.\u201d Experienced scripters might cringe a bit at that explanation, but that gives you an idea of what\u2019s going on here.<\/P>\n
So why are<\/I> we checking to see if the file is read-only? Well, momentarily, we\u2019re going to use the XOR operator to \u201cflip\u201d the switch; that\u2019s what this line of code is for:<\/P>
objFile.Attributes = objFile.Attributes XOR ReadOnly\n<\/PRE>\n
In this example, XOR simply toggles the file from one state to the other. If the file is read-only, XOR switches it to read-write; if it\u2019s read-write, XOR switches it to read-only. That\u2019s why we first check to see if the file is already<\/I> read-only. If it is, we want to flip the switch and make it read-write. If it\u2019s already read-write, though, we obviously don\u2019t want to flip the switch; after all, that would make the file read-only. (Remember, we\u2019re just toggling from one state to the other.)<\/P>\n
You\u2019re right: this bitwise stuff is confusing, so we owe you a treat. Therefore, here\u2019s a script which binds to the folder C:\\Scripts and turns all the read-only files in that folder into read-write files. We won\u2019t explain the details behind how the script gets back a list of all the files in a folder; we\u2019ll save that for tomorrow\u2019s column. (A sneaky way of making you come back tomorrow!) For now, though, here\u2019s your treat:<\/P>
Const ReadOnly = 1<\/p>\n
Set objFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)\nSet objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(“C:\\Scripts”)\nSet colFiles = objFolder.Files<\/p>\n
For Each objFile in colFiles\n    If objFile.Attributes AND ReadOnly Then\n        objFile.Attributes = objFile.Attributes XOR ReadOnly\n    End If\nNext\n<\/PRE>\n
See you tomorrow, huh?<\/P>
\n
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Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change a read-only file to a read-write file?— WR Hey, WR. We don\u2019t mean to shock you, but how can you change a read-only file to a read-write file? Why, by using a script, of course! We know: you never saw that coming, did you? As a matter of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,3,12,5],"class_list":["post-71193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-files","tag-scripting-guy","tag-storage","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change a read-only file to a read-write file?— WR Hey, WR. We don\u2019t mean to shock you, but how can you change a read-only file to a read-write file? Why, by using a script, of course! We know: you never saw that coming, did you? As a matter of […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}