file cannot be modified or erased; likely cause is read-only directory or file r(608)

Dear Dr. Haghish

I've just started using markdoc, which looks very useful. Unfortunately, I have had persistent instances of the following error message:

"It seems your operating system does not allow MarkDoc to replace your script file. This probably means that you are a Microsoft Windows user. MarkDoc created \Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed_2.ado instead, so you can work further on this file or replace it yourself. The original error was: "file C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed.ado cannot be modified or erased; likely cause is read-only directory or file {help r(608)}" file C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed.ado cannot be modified or erased; likely cause is read-only directory or file r(608)"

I am using Windows 7 with Stata 13 and while I don't have administrator privileges, i do have full read / write / delete permissions and I have hardly ever had difficulties of this kind before.

I did some testing in Stata but outside of markdoc and discovered that I could not reproduce the error message by copying and overwriting files replacing other files from within Stata.

copy "C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed.ado" "C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed_1.ado" erase "C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed.ado" copy "C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed_1.ado"

this worked without error, and copy xposed.ado xposed2.ado, replace copy xposed2.ado xposed.ado, replace
also worked without error.

I could only get the same error message by trying to copy a file replacing itself: copy xposed.ado xposed.ado, replace file C:\Users\amitrani\Desktop\markdoc\xposed.ado cannot be modified or erased; likely cause is read-only directory or file r(608);

Therefore, perhaps a little re-writing of the file replace operations could solve this problem without requiring users to have admin privileges? Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the problem? I hope my comments are useful, in the meantime I will try to use markdoc with the presently available funcionality.

My underlying concern is that I work on a corporate network and I know the IT department won't give me admin privileges.

Kind regards

Alex Mitrani

haghish / markdoc

file cannot be modified or erased; likely cause is read-only directory or file r(608) #21