Re: open problem

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 01:28:17 +0000 (GMT)

> Then BSD changed what was in directories (14 character filenames were
> a major bummer), and broke a lot of code that knew what was in
> directories. So now everyone uses opendir() and doesn't worry about
> what is in directories.

If you read the BSD FFS paper it explains how they needed to change the
interface to a kernel defined one to support multiple file system types.
In V7 on a PDP/11 having in user space was very good policy of course.

Some boxes still implement directory scanning with read() but wrap it in
opendir() calls too. Linux wraps getdents() in opendir.

Alan