Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mcnc!rti!talos!kjones
From: kjones@talos.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Reading directories (was: Re: directory copying with cp; broken?)
Message-ID: <331@talos.UUCP>
Date: 14 Oct 88 14:06:00 GMT
References: <30506@bbn.COM> <884@yabbie.rmit.oz>
Reply-To: kjones@talos.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Organization: Philip Morris Research Center, Richmond, VA
Lines: 9

In article <884@yabbie.rmit.oz> rcodi@yabbie.rmit.oz (Ian Donaldson) writes:
>So what's the problem with disallowing opening directory special files 
>generally?

It violates the UNIX principle of `a file is a file is a file...'.  It
is clear why directories should not be arbitrarily writable but I
don't see any such reason why they shouldn't be readable.  The portable
directory reading routines could use the existing read(2) system call,
instead of adding (yet another) system call just to read directories.