Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!ifi!gisle
From: gisle@ifi.uio.no (Gisle Hannemyr)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Portability
Message-ID: <1998@ifi.uio.no>
Date: 10 Sep 89 10:20:33 GMT
References: <116@quame.UUCP>
Organization: gisle@ifi.uio.no
Lines: 22
In-reply-to: bryan@quame.UUCP's message of 9 Sep 89 03:55:02 GMT

bryan@quame.UUCP (Bryan A. Woodruff) wrote:
> Do not all systems have a tree directory or some other directory structure?

No, they do no.

Embedded systems do not even have a file system, and some
operating systems (e.g. CMS, SINTRAN-III) have a sufficiently weird file
system to make directory operations targeted towards the UNIX, MS-DOS,
OS/2, VMS directory paradigms more or less useless.

There is a standard that do what you want.  IEEE POSIX 1003.1 is an
_operating system_ interface standard, and defines how C should interface
to the operating system, including the interface to the directory.

To put the specification of that interface in the _language_ standard
would severely limit the scope of the language.

- gisle hannemyr  (Norwegian Computing Center)
  EAN:   gisle@nr.uninett
  Inet:  gisle@ifi.uio.no
  UUCP:  ...!mcvax!ifi!gisle
------------------------------------------------