Xref: utzoo comp.std.c:2172 comp.lang.c:23964
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!aplcen!haven!decuac!shlump.nac.dec.com!mountn.dec.com!minow
From: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ansi c and directories
Message-ID: <1095@mountn.dec.com>
Date: 22 Nov 89 20:31:01 GMT
References: <13295@s.ms.uky.edu> <20881@mimsy.umd.edu>
Reply-To: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Followup-To: comp.std.c
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 17

In article <20881@mimsy.umd.edu> chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
>In any case, directory operations were clearly beyond the
>scope of the standard at the time it was begun---opendir &c. were
>nowhere near universal in 1985.

Decus C supported directory operations in its first public release in 1981.
The code ran on a half-dozen operating systems.  I even wrote Unix-specific
variants of the functions around that time, but I cheated by implementing
the directory scan operation by opening a pipe and forking a subprocess
that executed the 'ls' command, then parsing the results.  (A classic
Unix hack if there ever was one.)

So, there was prior art, even if it wasn't politically correct.

Martin Minow
minow@thundr.enet.dec.com
The above does not represent the position of Digital Equipment Corporation