Directory-backed Handle?

[Simon Marlow]

On 14/09/2010 20:00, Dimitry Golubovsky wrote:

> In the GHC I/O system, a Handle may be backed by a "device" (IODevice
> instance) with IODeviceType = Directory
>
> There doesn't seem to be any (at least Google search did not give
> anything) code that uses this; however, what is supposed to be read
> from such a Handle: newline-separated list of filenames (like in
> getDirectoryContents), or some sort of serialized FileStatus
> structures, or anything else?

The FD implementation of Handles never makes a Handle with an 
IODeviceType of Directory, because openFile is specified to raise an 
exception when applied to a directory.

So I suppose Directory could be considered superfluous in this context. 
  It's there because we use IODeviceType elsewhere in the IO system, 
where it's important that Directory is a value (e.g. System.IO.FD.mkFD).

Alternatively we could give it a meaning as you suggest - 
newline-separated file names seems like a reasonable interpretation.

Cheers,
	Simon