First: what Damian said.
Second: Whatever syntax people come up with has to make it easy and
type-safe to name particular combinations of those bits.
In other words, you should be able to make a bitset with Unix-style
permissions:
OTHER_EXECUTE
OTHER_WRITE
OTHER_READ
GROUP_EXECUTE
GROUP_WRITE
GROUP_READ
...
But still be able to make bitmasks (ignore the syntax here):
OTHER_MASK = OTHER_READ +| OTHER_WRITE +| OTHER_EXECUTE;
GROUP_MASK = GROUP_READ +| GROUP_WRITE +| GROUP_EXECUTE;
...
These bitmasks should be properly typed with respect to the original
bitset; which is to say, this should work:
my Permissions $other_perms = $file_perms +& OTHER_MASK;
-'f
