[Mono-dev] System.IO or Mono.Unix

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 17:49 +0000, Luciano _ wrote:
> First: I'm developing an application that use System.IO and i read that 
> there are some IO operation classes in the Mono.Unix namespace. Which is the 
> best solution? System.IO or Mono.Unix? I'm developing a Linux-Only 
> Application.

Use System.IO unless there is something you really need that only
Mono.Unix provides.  This assures portability.

> Second: Could someone explain (example) how 
> Mono.Unix.DirectoryInfo.GetEntries works?

By using readdir(3).

>   i need to get all the 
> directories/files/symbolic links and: length, datetime creation and 
> modified, fullpath, etc.  I don't understand how to use the returned value 
> (Mono.Unix.Native.Dirent) and how to convert to UnixFileInfo or 
> UnixSymbolicLinkInfo.

Use Mono.Unix.UnixDirectoryInfo.GetFileSystemEntries() if you want a
UnixFileSystemInfo subtype returned for each file system entry.  The
MOno.Unix.Native.Dirent is primarily useful for getting file system
entry names -- everything else is not necessarily portable between Unix
systems.  You'd use GetEntries() if you wanted to avoid the extra
stat(2) call that constructing a UnixFileSystemInfo requires (in order
to get modification time, file permissions, etc.).

 - Jon