|> Branson> chmod 644 -R .??* |> |> Branson> the '?'s will require two characters in the file |> Branson> name.. not just one which very effectively skips '.' and |> Branson> '..'. |> |> But it unfortunately misses all entries with a name of . followed by a |> single character: .a, .b, .c, etc. But, hey, close enough! Do those |> by hand, I say!

Or try something like:

find .* -name '..' -prune -o -print | xargs chmod 644

Depending on the current ownership and permissions in the directory tree, you might want to insert "-depth" before the "-name" to get a depth-first traversal.

-Pat