> Hi!
>
> If a dir is nothing but a file with dir entries, with its own
> inode etc., why wasn't an open system call implemented for directories?
>
> How exectly does the opendir libr. routine work?
There was once a time when people did use open() to read directories.
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.
Joe Buehler