Site hosting in public directory instead of root

Is this normal?

[Lorel]

I'm working on a site that has all files in a public directory instead of the root. Is this normal for a site on shared hosting? I've never seen this kind of setup before.

Also I assume that htaccess will not work on shared hosting?

I'm not sure it's on an Apache server or not as the whois does not show what kind of server for this site.

Can anyone see a problem with the above set up?

[wilderness]

Lorel,
I've had shared hosting for more than eight years and through three different hosts in that time.

My root directory in all three has been "public_html".

All three shared hosts have allowed use of htaccess.

[Lorel]

Ok, thanks. I don't usually deal with shared hosting so that must be why they are in a public directory.