Linux: Set permission only to directories

Question

I have to change the permissions of the htdocs directory in apache to a certain group and with certain read/write/execute.

The directories need to have 775

Answer 1

chmod can actually do this itself; the X symbolic permission means "execute, if it makes sense" which generally means on directories but not files. So, you can use:

chmod -R u=rwX,go=rX /path/to/htdocs

The only potential problem is that if any of the plain files already have execute set, chmod assumes it's intentional and keeps it.