From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Thu,  9 Mar 2000 10:50:00 +0000
From: forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk
Subject: [9fans] Re: 9p question
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9eb70e0c-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <20000309105000.z10iquWfwZ9SBy7t45DWc6g-JygW5BtHUnFV9rSibZ8@z>

>>I can always issue as many Tstat as I would like. What wrong with
>>letting length represent the number of directory entries  ?

many interesting directories are generated on-the-fly (indeed that's the
normal case for devices).   any size that could be
given for any directory is at best a hint, and it is hard to see how to put
it to any essential use.  consequently, having to run through the generation
code just to produce a less-than-useful size seems a bit of a waste
of time.

i made the extra effort in an operating system of my own,
but i didn't find it especially worthwhile.

it's worth noting that there are plenty of files in Plan 9 that can be read
but have length set to zero (for much the same reason).
the conventions are not completely consistent in practice,
possibly caused by differing authors or changing
priorities: compare {ls -l /dev/time} and {ls -l '#r/rtc'}.