Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!longway!std-unix
From: henry@utzoo.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Query about <dirent.h>
Message-ID: <445@longway.TIC.COM>
Date: 28 Nov 89 04:33:50 GMT
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From: henry@utzoo.uucp

>From: Andy Tanenbaum <uunet!cs.vu.nl!ast>
>I don't follow.  What is it that that the standards don't promise.  Surely
>a programmer may declare a struct dirent...

That is exactly what is not promised:  that you can declare a `struct
dirent' (as opposed to a `struct dirent *') that is of any use to you.
The only use for `struct dirent' defined in 1003.1 is that readdir()
returns a pointer to one, and that the thing that pointer points to has
a member `d_name' that you can examine.  There is no promise that the
type `struct dirent' is good for anything else whatsoever.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu


Volume-Number: Volume 17, Number 73