Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: ansi c and directories
Message-ID: <11738@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 5 Dec 89 05:30:50 GMT
References: <225800244@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <3332@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> <7127@ficc.uu.net> <11707@smoke.BRL.MIL> <7156@ficc.uu.net> <1292@uwm.edu> <7193@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <7193@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In any system for which files have names, there is at least one directory.

Not necessarily one that could be opened by name.

>Thus a routine that returns the names of files in at least the current
>directory is more generally portable than system().

The concept of "current directory" is also not portable.

>And, as you pointed out, system() is in the standard.

system() was in the library Base Document; the dirent stuff wasn't.