Because the chmod is intrusive, and what should be a simple read operation
has now turned into a write-read-write operation.
For example, you're backing up a filesystem with 000 files on it. Does tar
*really* have to play with the inode (and thus change the ctime) just to
read a file to back it up? What if it's on a read-only filesystem?
Having the sort of semantics that require this sort of fiddling just gets in
the way, and I'm not convinced it gains anything.
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