Re: Check existence of a directory?

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Scott, as you told me once, access() is not intended for CL (until 
V5R3). It DOES work for existence - at least it always has for me - but is 
probably not to be trusted. It's an accident, because the variable for 
specifying what kind of test you are running is supposed to be passed by 
value, not by reference. Anyway, I've been lucky, I guess.

I don't hear you saying CL, but that was the context of the original post. 
So that makes CHKOUT/CHKIN the easiest from a pure CL standpoint.

Regards
Vern

At 11:38 AM 7/9/2004, you wrote:

> Hi Adam,
>
> > I have a CL program that uses CHKDLO to determine the existence of a 
> folder.
> > We are changing things around to use directories.  What would the 
> equivalent
> > command be to check for the existence of a directory?
>
> The "right" way is to use the access() API.  You check for the existence
> of a directory in the exact same manner that you check for the existence
> of a stream file -- search the archives, there have been 2 or 3 threads
> about checking for a stream file.
>
> the stat() API is another way to go.  It's a bit slower than access(), but
> it has the added advantage that you can pick apart the mode to see if the
> file is actually a directory (as opposed to a stream file)  I know that
> I've posted examples of this in the past as well.
>
> I personally DON'T like using CHKIN or CHKOUT for this.  They allocate the
> resources to your job, and I don't think that's what you want to do.
>
> I also wouldn't use DSPLNK because of the overhead of creating a spooled
> file -- but it's certainly a lot better than using CHKIN or CHKOUT.
>
> > I assume we can't use wrklnk, because that will actually display the
> > screen.  Also, what would the correct msgid be?
>
> WRKLNK is interactive, it's not really what you're looking for.