Filesystem-oriented flags: sad, messy and not going away

The problem is too many developers only develop to solve the immediate problem. Spend a bit of time to define the *general* problem, define a state table and design the API to solve said state table, and then by all means just solve your bit of it.

That way, you can extend the function to fill the state table as and when, without having to redesign the interface.

Cheers,
Wol