I am currently writing a script to dump data from a mysql database I am trying to create a directory which is writable to by everyone so the user which the mysqld is running under has access to write the file this is the type of command I am creating the directory with my $dump_dir = $output_dir."/".$dbname; if(! -e $dump_dir){ mkdir($dump_dir, 0777) or throw("Couldn't make ".$dump_dir." $! "); } but this is the privileges i get for the directory drwxr-xr-x 2 lec ensembl 8192 Jun 4 15:15 briggsae_new_2 does anyone know what I am doing wrong