A graphical explorer wouldn't use this. Not now, not in the days of text-based windowing systems. They need to load the entire directory into memory in order to sort the file names.

A graphical explorer wouldn't use this. Not now, not in the days of text-based windowing systems. They need to load the entire directory into memory in order to sort the file names.

Sure, whatever you say, you know all implementation of all explorers by heart, and you can't sort data unless its all in memory at the same time

I didn't say the result had to be kept in memory. What happens to the list as it is read or after it is read is irrelevant. I'm saying you can't sort it without reading it all file names from the directory, so selectdir is completely useless to explorers.

I don't need to know all graphical explorers to know they don't use selectdir; I just need to know that a graphical explorer that doesn't sort file names is useless.