On multi-user systems and servers filesystem permissions can matter. Often one wants a restrictive umask (e.g. 077) for file/directory creation as a "safe default". Then sometimes you want to "open up" perms on some entire file sub-tree..say to collaborate with some other user.
While you can do chown -R there is no "only directories" filter or handle
user-executable files differently option. One can do wrapper scripts with
find, but using chom is more efficient for both users and the system.
One can also do fancy Zsh recursive globbing like **(.x), but at least to
me the ergonomics of chom are better than either of these options.
chom [optional-params] [paths: string...]
This enforces {owner, group owner, permissions} for {dirs, non-executable other
files, and user-executable files}. This only makes chown/chmod syscalls when
needed, both for speed & not to touch ctime unnecessarily. It does not handle
ACLs, network FS defined access, etc. Return zero if no calls are needed.
Options:
-v, --verbose bool false print chown and chmod calls as they happen
-q, --quiet bool false suppress most OS error messages
-n, --dry-run bool false only print what system calls are needed
-r=, --recurse= int 0 max recursion depth for any dir in paths
-c, --chase bool false follow symbolic links to dirs in recursion
-x, --xdev bool false block recursion across device boundaries
-o=, --owner= string "" owner to set; may need root; defl=self
-g=, --group= string "" group owner to set; defl=primaryGid(self)
-d=, --dirPerm= Perm 2755 permission mask for dirs
-f=, --filePerm= Perm 664 permission mask for files
-e=, --execPerm= Perm 775 permission mask for u=x files