What does "read only" and "non executable" means for Folders?

Question

Talking about authorizations, I know what "read only" and "non executable" would mean for a file.

But what do those two mean for a folder? And how can I change those access authorizations?

Somehow I can not make it for folders

Answer 1

• The MS-DOS flag "Read Only" has no effect on directories. Only the graphical file manager Windows Explorer uses it to activate desktop.ini customizations such as custom icons, similar to the "System" flag (see The Old New Thing).

  To make a directory actually read-only, you would need to set a custom ACL (access control list) through icacls or through Properties → Security.

• The NT ACL permissions "Read" and "Write" refer to accessing the file list. If you can 'read' a directory, that means you can get a list of file names; if you can 'write', that means you can create/move/rename/delete files inside it. (This is the same as +r +w on Unix/Linux.)

• The NT ACL permission "Executable" actually means "Traversable" for directories. (Indeed that's how it's labelled in the Security tab.) This allows you to access the files inside that directory. For example, having 'read' but not 'execute/traverse' access to a folder still lets you see files inside, but not actually open them.

  However, Windows kind of ignores this permission for directories. All users are granted a special privilege that allows entering any directory even if you don't have 'execute/traverse' access to it. (But other than that, it's still the same as +x on Unix/Linux.)

Note that ACLs configured in the Security tab are inheritable by default – so giving someone "Read" access to a directory automatically gives "Read" access to the files inside.

Answer 2

Details about the permission:

• Read & Execute: Users can run executable files, including scripts.
• Read: Users can view files and file properties.

Answer 3

The read-only flag on directories is also used as one of the flags to indicate long file name entries in FAT file system

VFAT Long File Names (LFNs) are stored on a FAT file system using a trick—adding (possibly multiple) additional entries into the directory before the normal file entry. The additional entries are marked with the Volume Label, System, Hidden, and Read Only attributes (yielding 0x0F), which is a combination that is not expected in the MS-DOS environment, and therefore ignored by MS-DOS programs and third-party utilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system#VFAT

Whenever a user creates a file with a long filename, Windows creates an eight-plus-three name for the file. In addition to this conventional entry, Windows creates one or more secondary folder entries for the file, one for each 13 characters in the long filename. Each of these secondary folder entries stores a corresponding part of the long filename in Unicode.

Windows sets the volume, read-only, system, and hidden file attribute bits of the secondary folder entry to mark it as part of a long filename.

http://www.ntfs.com/fat-filenames.htm