Why am I able to cat a directory?

Matthew Dillon dillon at backplane.com
Sun Jan 22 22:43:08 PST 2023


Being able to cat a directory (i.e. issue read()s) depends on the
filesystem.   In the old days, directories were scanned via read()s instead
of with purpose-specific system calls.  Newer filesystems do not implement
read() support on directories.   So, for example, on DragonFly, you can cat
a UFS directory but you cannot cat a HAMMER2 directory.

-Matt
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