Why am I able to cat a directory?

[Matthew Dillon]

To be more specific, most newer filesystems hash directory entries, and the
'seek' offset is a hash code... often quite a bit hash code (64 bits).
Which means that there is no linear file equivalent that read() can operate
on.   Only getdirentries() or getdents() works on these sorts of
directories (readdir() is a libc function which issues getdirentries()
internally).

-Matt
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