[elderK]

:) Care to elaborate?

I mean, as far as I see it, the directory is still a file, of a specific format.

How is that any different than an image file, say, of a particular format? You still need specialized programs in order to manipulate them in a meaningful way. But they're just bytes. Just like the directory is just bytes.

The difference, of course, is that allowing the user to arbitrarily manipulate a directory entry at the byte-level could lead to filesystem corruption.

I'm aware I may be missing something really obvious here. Heck, even contradicting myself :)

Educate me :)

[DonHopkins]

Well, you could unify the interface to files and directories by removing all the system calls to deal with opening and closing and reading and writing files, and then removing all the system calls to deal with opening and closing and reading and writing directories, and then simply using ioctl() for everything!