Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!umich!yale!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Why use pwd(1) for getpwd(3C)? (Re: Why use find?)
Message-ID: <21628:Oct1400:12:2990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 90 00:12:29 GMT
References: <1990Oct11.012643.11274@diku.dk> <28623:Oct1103:09:1990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <4182@auspex.auspex.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 19

In article <4182@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
> >> >  [ why is getpwd() implemented as `pwd` in System V? ]
> >> >Because there's no getwd() system call to have the kernel do the job.
> OK, so why *isn't* "getwd()" implemented as `pwd' in BSD?

Because the BSD programmers, unlike the AT&T programmers, decided that
not being able to figure out your current directory (if you couldn't get
to it from root) wasn't a problem at all.

> >POSIX has the system call
> Bzzt!  Sorry, wrong answer, next contestant please.  POSIX has *NO*
> "system calls",

Oh, give it a rest. Everything in the POSIX book is a system call.
Sure, some calls might not be implemented inside the kernel---and BSD
stat() might not be implemented inside the kernel either. (It can be
written in terms of lstat() and readlink(), for example.)

---Dan