Re: stat() system call and AFS?

[Jim . Rees]

I've often wished the unix file system included a bit in the directory entry
that would tell you whether the object was a file or directory.  Since it's
immutable, and only one bit, it wouldn't be expensive to implement.  And
it's very useful for tree descenders.

This becomes more important as distributed file systems proliferate, making
stat() more expensive.

The Apollo version of unix did this, but it's now on the scrap heap of
history.