Using shell commands versus C equivalents

[Garrett Cooper]

Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> Quoting Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu> (from Tue, 12 Jun 
> 2007 22:55:18 -0700):
>
>> Another simple question (I hope):
>>    Is there any reason why shell commands should be used in place of a
>> C command (in this case chmod via vsystem instead of the chmod(2)
>> function)? It seems like the fork / exec would be more expensive with
>> the shell command, but any area where code could be optimized is more
>> than welcome I would think.
>
> If it is just one file, I don't see the reason to use the shell 
> command, but if you need to reinvent "chmod -R", I don't see a reason 
> to forbid the use of the shell command (pragmatic programming).
>
> Bye,
> Alexander.
>
    Exactly my thinking (ch{own,mod} for one file, not reinventing the 
-R 'wheel'). After looking over style(7) I don't see anything about not 
doing that.
    Thanks for the reply :).
-Garrett