[Info-vax] Request description of UFS for VMS person

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <176uZD2KcidF-pn2-oDg7JnJOBrdZ at rikki.tavi.co.uk>,
	"Bob Eager" <rde42 at spamcop.net> writes:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:30:13 UTC, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon)
> wrote:
> 
>> In article <gsl18u$bja$6 at naig.caltech.edu>,
>> 	glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
>> > Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>> > (snip on od or cat on unix directories)
>> >  
>> >> Current version of dd won't do it either.  Of course, you could grab the
>> >> source to cat and write your own version that ignores it being a directory.
>> >> Or just copy the stripped down version fromt he K&R C book.  :-)
>> > 
>> > I believe the failure is at the system call level, propagated
>> > back through errno and perror.  Likely the programs don't know
>> > or care that it is a directory, but just that the open fails.
>> 
>> Seems unlikely.  Always could "cat" a directory in the past because,
>> after all, it, too, is just a stream of bytes.  :-)  For the hell of
>> it, tonite, I will take a look at the source for the current version
>> of cat.  I think I will find a test for directories and a deliberate
>> fail if it is.
> 
> Hmmm....my FreeBSD systems allow one to 'cat' a directory, as I would 
> expect.

What version?  Mine did in the past but I just tried it and it failed
on a directory.  I run mostly FreeBSD here.  No Solaris currently in
operation.  Not even at home.

> 
> I just tried on a SunOS system at work, and 'cat' fails on a directory. 
> I don't have the source for that, but I wrote a test program and 
> successfully opened a directory with that.
> 
> So it does seem to be, at least on SunOS, something in the application 
> rather than the API.

As I expected, protect the user from himself.

bill
 

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>