On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr> wrote:
> 
> > Just a small note to tell that I think it would be nice to have
> > support for Unix.*stat on win32.  Not all characteristics may make
> > sense but [file_kind], [st_size], [st_perm], [st_*time] do.
> 
> Unix.stat is implemented under Windows (building on the _stati64()
> function provided by the MS C library) and sets the fields you
> mention to reasonable values.

Sorry for the confusion: I was interested in Unix.fstat and when
somebody told me it does not work on win32 (I do not use win32 myself
but try to write portable code whenever possible), I had a (too) quick
look at the manual which says that [lstat], [fstat] are not
implemented -- should not have put a star.

> Still under Windows (native Windows, not Cygwin), Unix.lstat behaves
> like Unix.stat and Unix.fstat is not implemented.

Maybe the manual could be updated to reflect that?  [IMHO, it would be
  nice if the windows peculiarities were in the ocamldoc comments -- I
  usually use ocamlbrowser...]

> (I'm not even sure the latter is implementable at all with the
> Win32 API.)

Windows gurus here?  (My goal with fstat was to know whether stdin was
connected to a socket or a pipe.)

> > Also, why not treat *.lnk as symbolic links under win32?
> 
> For the native Windows ports, I think this wouldn't fit the "spirit"
> of these ports, which is to remain relatively close to the semantics
> of the underlying OS (Windows) and provide Unix-like wrappers that
> are quite thin.

Thanks for the explanation.  (Still there is
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/reference/ifaces/ishelllink/ishelllink.asp
but I do not know whether it fits the bill or whether it is worth the
trouble.)

Regards,
ChriS