Allow FOPEN(), FOPTNUM(), FOPTNAME() and FINFO() to also work with a directory file

[Kurt_Bremser]

On hierarchical filesystems, a directory is just a file (albeit of a specific type), but nonetheless a file that has the same attributes any other file has: permissions, modification or other date(s), a size. The directory-specific functions DOPEN() et al are suited to mostly process the contents of the directory, but they miss out on the file-specific attributes of the directory file itself.

I therefore propose to enable the FOPEN() and other functions to work with a directory file for the purely FILE aspects of it.

[ChrisNZ]

Directories files have a fixed size (typically 4k under Unix), no?

At least as important, more metadata should be retrieved.

At a minimum, these should be available :

- 3 dates (created, modified, accessed) - some missing for Unix and Windows

- owner - missing for Windows

and maybe file attributes under Windows while we're at it.

[Kurt_Bremser]

Directory files will grow as needed, so their size is not static.

UNIX does not have a created timestamp, only "file modified", "inode modified" and "file accessed".

[ChrisNZ]

That's coming, depending on the FS. 🙂

Some filesystems have a birthtime or crtime stamp. OS X (HSF filesystem) or FreeBSD (UFS2, ZFS) or Fedora (ext4) use it I think. Unsure about Red Hat.