In the beginning was cacls.exe. This little command-line utility could edit access control lists in the NT filesystem. It was deemed by some to be inefficient and underpowered.

So when Windows Server 2003 came along (and Vista, mind you), Microsoft shipped an updated version called icacls.exe which was more competent in some areas, and less competent in some areas.

Looking at the situation, Microsoft realized that icacls was insufficient, and wrote another tool called xcacls.exe. This was more competent, but also underpowered.

So they wrote another version, called xcacls.vbs, which finally – after four iterations – offers users the capability to remove inheritance on folders from the command prompt. The functionality has always been there in the GUI, though.

It makes me wonder if anyone – anyone – writes scripts for Windows. On the other hand, given the crappy cmd.exe, maybe it’s no surprise no-one does.