Thank you, I've found the difference. We set pattern-length to the length (in bytes) of pattern-text and we don't null-terminate the character string in pattern-text prior to calling _START.
I modified my program to zero pattern-length and null-terminate the string of characters in pattern-text before calling _START and I now get "." and "..", with full path, in f-entry-name for the first two _READs.
We like "our way" better for the following reasons:
1. The length of pattern string placed in pattern-text varies. "You're way" would require us add code to locate the end of the character string in pattern-text and append a null byte prior to calling _START.
2. We don't want "." and "..". "You're way" would require us to add code to loop back to the _READ immediately after the first to executions.
So the question is: Can we rely on Micro Focus to retain this behavior for "our way" in future releases? Or is this disparity in behavior between null-terminated pattern strings and space-padded pattern strings going to be considered a bug and be standardized?
Again, we like it the way it is. We just need to know if it will stay this way?