Emacs' `dired` mode might or might not be able to produce a directory listing by itself. However, the author admits that > Of course, quite a number of syscall

Emacs' `dired` mode might or might not be able to produce a directory listing by itself. However, the author admits that > Of course, quite a number of syscalls are missing from emacs (not available as elisp primitives), so as it is, it would be hard enough to do EVERYTHING with emacs, but this is a starting point.