From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad:tektronix!zehntel!sytek!menlo70!hao!seismo!rlgvax!guy
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: dir.h
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.152
Posted: Sun Mar 27 19:39:22 1983
Received: Thu Mar 31 01:02:38 1983
References: sri-arpa.678

1) Yes, it's a minor nuisance, but it doesn't take much code to get around.
"strncpy"ing the name to a 14+1 character buffer and setting buffer[14] to
'\0' will suffice.

2) 4.2BSD has a different directory structure.  The people who did it point
out that there should really be a standard library routine to read directories,
pass over empty entries, etc., so that only one small piece of code in the
system knows about directory formats.  It could return a structure containing
an I-number and a null-terminated entry name; the exact format (size of I-number
and entry name) would be system-dependent.  That way, code could be written
to port to versions of UNIX with different directory structures, and even to
some non-UNIX operating systems that are gracious enough to let user programs
read directories.  Unfortunately, only 4.2BSD systems (and systems which have
received the V7/32V/4.1BSD/USG UNIX versions of these routines and installed
them) have these routines.  Still, even if you don't have them you can write
your own, and thus would only have to solve this problem once.

						Guy Harris
						RLG Corporation
						seismo!rlgvax!guy