Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!chad
From: chad@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (D. Chadwick Gibbons)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ansi c and directories
Message-ID: <1292@uwm.edu>
Date: 2 Dec 89 06:13:30 GMT
References: <225800244@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <3332@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> <7127@ficc.uu.net> <11707@smoke.BRL.MIL> <7156@ficc.uu.net>
Sender: news@uwm.edu
Reply-To: chad@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (D. Chadwick Gibbons)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 16

In article <7156@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
|In article <11707@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
|>In article <7127@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
|>>So, what should the first argument to fopen() be on an Unisys 1100?
|> A filename, whose mapping to file access is defined by the implementation.
|Good. We've established that. Now why can't the same semantics be defined
|for directory reading utilities?

	I'm sure the concept of a file is more inherit to operating
systems than is the concept of a directory.  It wouldn't be
appropriate for the standard to cover directories.  Of course,
X3J11 did include system() within the standard, so who knows what
they think at times.  The whole concept of the system() call won't
work on many operating systems, and even though it isn't required
to do anything, it seems to be one of those functions that is
ignored if not implemented.  Neat.