From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,6482d0ae6dcb1b4c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-09-27 07:01:41 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!world!news From: Robert A Duff Subject: Re: if file exist User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 14:01:16 GMT Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii References: <3d9245da.259420486@news.cis.dfn.de> <3D933A6B.5000105@cogeco.ca> <8db3d6c8.0209270247.5bf07ae5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:29375 Date: 2002-09-27T14:01:16+00:00 List-Id: nma124@hotmail.com (steve_H) writes: > Robert A Duff wrote in message news:... > > > I don't agree that "a general solution is not possible". > > A File_Exists return Boolean function makes perfect sense. > > Of course it returns False if the file is invisible to the > > current process (because it "exists" in an inaccessible directory). > > To *this* process, that file does not exist. > > But the above is not logical. If your function return FALSE, then one > does not know if this means the file actually does not exist, or that > the function was not able to determine if it exist or not becuase of > permission issues. The user might want to know this. Fine, but if you ask whether secret/mumble exists, and "secret" is my secret directory, it should *not* tell you whether or not the file exists. - Bob