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From: Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: encapsulating directory operations
Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 00:18:15 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2025-05-20, Paul Edwards <mutazilah@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Paul Edwards" <mutazilah@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:100j09o$2f04b$1@dont-email.me...
>
>> Manipulating directories is not as important as manipulating
>> files. The C90 people didn't leave out file manipulation (I
>> think the ISO Pascal people left it out, at least originally).
>
> Actually, I think it was program paramaters that weren't
> specified.
>
> But again - maybe it is C90 that was wrong to specify argc
> and argv and the Pascal people got it right.
>
> That depends on the philosophy of language standards.
>
> And I am not personally familiar with the philosophy of
> language standards.

ANSI C was codifying a lot of existing practices.

C programs starting with a main() function which takes argc and argv was
in this category.  It came from Unix, and C implementations on other
platforms imitated that.

C appeared as the systems programming language of Unix.
C on Unix had a way to process directories via library
functions.

Implementors of C on other systems choose to implement some functions
from Unix, and not others. They didn't implement the directory-related
ones, rendering them nonportable, and unsuitable for standardizing
into the language.

From my understanding, C and Unix standardization were separate but
somewhat coordinated efforts. Unix things that didn't get into C were
standardized by the emerging Unix standard.

Today, if I want a program tha tneeds to walk directories, I use the
POSIX C library. It is widely implemented. The program won't run
absolutely everywhere, but it will run on many embedded systems,
as well as supercomputers, and everything in between.

-- 
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