Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: xbbs features as request
Message-ID: <55015@sun.uucp>
Date: 1 Jun 88 05:54:33 GMT
References: <203@turnkey.TCC.COM> <3837@uwspan.UUCP> <7841@ncoast.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 17

> Can you say "portable"?  BSD has portable directory routines.  System V does,
> too:  but calls them by a different name.  EARLY System V and previous AT&T
> releases (and Xenix 2/3, etc.) don't have them at all.

Yes, but they can be provided; the source to the 4.1BSD version was posted to
the net about 100 years ago by Kirk McKusick, and other versions are in the
"comp.sources.unix" archives.

> I hate to say this, AT&T:  but "struct direNt" was a DUMB idea.
> Incompatibility still reigns supreme.  AAAAARGH!!!!!

1) I don't think this was AT&T's idea, I think it was POSIX's.

2) It's not such a dumb idea if you have to include  on a
   V7-filesystem version of UNIX (which defines "struct direct" as the
   16-byte format directory entry) in your program.  The only reason it was
   done was to avoid namespace collisions.