Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How do I deal with (null) filenames?
Message-ID: <10628@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 30 Jul 89 11:32:47 GMT
References: <2131@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 7

In article <2131@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> bio_zwbb@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dr. William B. Busa) writes:
>These truly are nulls

They can't be.  Try invoking "od -c ." to see what's really in the
directory.  My bet is that you'll see the characters (, n, u, l, l, ),
etc., probably produced by a sprintf() that produces that for a %s
format spec with a corresponding null pointer argument.