On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 12:33:05AM +0100, Al Viro wrote: > They are. BSD folks had (sanely, IMO) put the 'type' bits of st_mode > into directory entry verbatim. Again, "symbolic constant" != "can be > expected to change"... If, e.g., some port decides to change S_IFIFO, > they'll have no end of fun accessing ext*, xfs, ufs, etc. since that > value is stored in the on-disk inode and in effect pinned down by > that. > > All S_... constants are universal and going to remain unchanged on > any Unices. Dear Al, Shall I resubmit without the compile-time checks in the latest patch then? Regards, Phil