-#ifdef VMS
- /* For technical reasons, VMS misbehaves with X_OK */
- if (access(outdir,R_OK|W_OK) != 0)
-#else
+#ifndef VMS /* outdir is a directory spec, but access() for VMS demands a
+ filename. In any case, stat(), below, will catch the problem
+ if outdir is not a directory spec, and the fopen() or open()
+ will catch an error if there is no write access.
+
+ Presumably, this problem could also be solved by using the DEC
+ C routines to convert the directory syntax to Unixly, and give
+ that to access(). However, time's too short to do that just
+ now.
+ */