Reading directories (was: Re: directory copying with cp; broken?)

[Kyle Jones]

In article <884 at yabbie.rmit.oz> rcodi at yabbie.rmit.oz (Ian Donaldson) writes:
>So what's the problem with disallowing opening directory special files 
>generally?

It violates the UNIX principle of `a file is a file is a file...'.  It
is clear why directories should not be arbitrarily writable but I
don't see any such reason why they shouldn't be readable.  The portable
directory reading routines could use the existing read(2) system call,
instead of adding (yet another) system call just to read directories.