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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Dir(3) emulation - missing seekdir(3)
Message-ID: <5705@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 28-Mar-87 04:27:16 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5705
Posted: Sat Mar 28 04:27:16 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Apr-87 01:36:59 EST
References: <264@aecom2.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <264@aecom2.UUCP> jschwart@aecom2.UUCP (Joseph Schwartz) writes:
>...  Well, he seems to have left off seekdir(3).

You might as well nuke seekdir() and telldir().  On some
systems (such as 4.3BSD), no simple implementation of these
routines will work right in all circumstances.  I've had
quite a time trying to make "rm -r" work, and keep stumbling
over interesting phenomena such as directories being
reshuffled by the kernel while I'm still using them, etc.

I think this sort of thing is what led IEEE 1003.1 to drop
these specific routines from the POSIX spec.