How do i determine if a file is read only

I'm writing a shell in python and need to determine if a file is read only for the current user. How do i interpret os.stat(path)[0] for a given user. This isn't trivial on linux you may get write permissions because of user group or others. Then there's the concept of a user being in the files group with group write but is the owner with read only permissions. I need this to be cross platform so it works on Mac Linux and Windows.

Solution 1:

statinfo = os.stat(path, *, dir_fd=None, follow_symlinks=True)

Here's a description from the documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.stat

"Get the status of a file or a file descriptor. Perform the equivalent of a stat() system call on the given path. path may be specified as either a string or bytes – directly or indirectly through the PathLike interface – or as an open file descriptor. Return a stat_result object."

Solution 2:

For those on Windows that stumbled upon this comment looking on how to check if a file is read only, here's my solution, tested on Python 3.7.9:

FILE_PATH = r"C:\temp\file.txt"


def is_file_read_only(path: str) -> bool:
    try:
        open(path, "w")
    except PermissionError:
        return True
    else:
        return False


read_only = is_file_read_only(FILE_PATH)
print(f'File is read only: {read_only}')