The problem is that an entry might change from a directory to a symbolic link between the stat() and the open(). O_NOFOLLOW prevents such race conditions.
I fail to see why or how O_NOFOLLOW would prevent this from happening if you were thinking about doing a sysopen followed by a readdir or anything more or less equivalent with a different system call.

Maybe you should explain more precisely what you're really trying to do.

In reply to Re^3: readdir() on a sysopen() handle? by Laurent_R
in thread readdir() on a sysopen() handle? by perlhuhn

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