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From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Re: Platform portable support of heir. file systems
Date: 1996/12/18
Message-ID: <1996Dec18.071612.1@eisner>#1/1
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references: <01bbec7f$453edcd0$24af1486@pc-phw>
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organization: LJK Software
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Date: 1996-12-18T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <01bbec7f$453edcd0$24af1486@pc-phw>, "Paul Whittington" <paul@sage.inel.gov> writes:
> I was just working on one of our support packages that interfaces to the
> host OS to do file I/O and can't find any support in the Ada Annex set for
> a portable way of accessing heir. file systems.  I need things like
> "MakeDirectory", "RemoveDirectory", etc.  

On VMS:

	Directories can only be nested 8 deep or so if you want
	the files they contain to be backed up.

	Directories cannot be removed until all their contents
	are removed, regardless of how much privilege you have.

	Directories are always created with nobody having delete
	permission, regardless of what the caller specifies (this
	is independent of the previous rule).

	Directories have a "version limit" attribute which
	would logically be set by a creator to get a desired
	behaviour, even if only to override the default for
	the default of inheriting from the parent.

	The directory from which you read might be different from
	the directory to which you write, given identical specifications,
	if the device specified is a rooted directory rather than a
	real device.  (Come to think of it, Unix users creating a
	directory don't even specify the device separately, do they>?)

I am certain that other operating systems have quirks as well,
especially when one gets into permissible name lengths and
character sets (which are _not_ necessarily the same as for files).

A common package for directory manipulation would not seem to be
very "portable" if the rules differ on each operating system.

Larry Kilgallen