Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 19:24:14 +0200 (IST) From: Eli Zaretskii X-Sender: eliz AT is To: DJ Delorie cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Subject: readdir and hidden files Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Does anybody remember why readdir by default skips hidden files? Is it only for the startup code which expands wildcards? If so, we can do it specifically in the startup code. The problem with this behavior is that many (most?) applications want to disable it. One example is Emacs, in its Directory Edit mode or when it auto-completes on file names: if Emacs doesn't see the hidden directories/files, it cannot display them at all. Another example is `diff' when it's used to compare directories: hidden files aren't compared at all. There are other examples as well. In my experience, even if an application sometimes hides files from the user, like `ls' without -a, it has an option to show them. So the application level is the one that decides whether or not to show the files. All these cases usually need to set the special __OPENDIR bit in opendir_flags, which requires DJGPP-specific hacks. It is best avoided. Can we remove this feature in v2.02?