Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/AA) Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer Subject: Re: Is Unix getting bloated with un-needed special cases? Message-ID: <1991Apr30.021316.1420@NCoast.ORG> Date: 30 Apr 91 02:13:16 GMT References: <3898@dali> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/AA) Followup-To: comp.unix.programmer Distribution: na Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast) Lines: 18 As quoted from by rearl@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Robert Earl): +--------------- | Was the directory mounted across NFS? If so, file operations like | this one on directories fail, as you pointed out. +--------------- Way back when, a directory was just a file. Nowadays, however, directories in different filesystems can have extremely different formats (courtesy FSSW or vnodes) or even not actually exist! It's a lot easier to fail a directory read with EISDIR than it is to have special code to generate and/or modify directory entries to be what a program reading the directory as a file expects. ++Brandon -- Me: Brandon S. Allbery Ham: KB8JRR/AA 10m,6m,2m,220,440,1.2 Internet: allbery@NCoast.ORG (restricted HF at present) Delphi: ALLBERY AMPR: kb8jrr.AmPR.ORG [44.70.4.88] uunet!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery KB8JRR @ WA8BXN.OH