Query about <dirent.h>

[henry at utzoo.uucp]

From: henry at utzoo.uucp

>From: Andy Tanenbaum <uunet!cs.vu.nl!ast>
>I don't follow.  What is it that that the standards don't promise.  Surely
>a programmer may declare a struct dirent...

That is exactly what is not promised:  that you can declare a `struct
dirent' (as opposed to a `struct dirent *') that is of any use to you.
The only use for `struct dirent' defined in 1003.1 is that readdir()
returns a pointer to one, and that the thing that pointer points to has
a member `d_name' that you can examine.  There is no promise that the
type `struct dirent' is good for anything else whatsoever.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu


Volume-Number: Volume 17, Number 73