From: Gareth.McCaughan@... (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: 2002-01-13T04:06:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Dir.entries have no home

Ron Jeffries wrote:
> 2. I'm essentially entirely ignorant of OSs that aren't Windows and
> that I didn't write. In Windows, '.' names the current working
> directory, and '..' names the parent of the cwd. Is that true in (all,
> some, no) other OSs?

Some. It's true in Unix (in all its many varieties), although
there a directory may in fact have many parents. The truth is
that mkdir installs a ".." entry in the directory it makes, and
subsequent hard or soft linking to the directory doesn't change
that. When you move a directory (e.g., with the "mv" command)
its ".." link is adjusted appropriately.

Some systems use different markers for the current and parent
directories. For instance, RISC OS (not to be confused with
RISC/OS) uses @ for current and ^ for parent. I forget what
MacOS uses, but it's something different again.

This really ought to be in File, just like File::SEPARATOR.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan@pobox.com
..sig under construc