From: patrick-may@... (Patrick May)
Date: 2002-04-03T16:35:07+09:00
Subject: Re: a note on the . and .. discussion

Yohanes Santoso <ysantoso@jenny-gnome.dyndns.org> wrote in message news:<871ydxaj7m.fsf@jenny-gnome.dyndns.org>...
> patrick-may@monmouth.com (Patrick May) writes:
> 
> > I just realized that unix commands do not recognize the "." and ".."
> 
> You're mistaking shell with unix command. The character * is expanded
> by shell. The invoked unix command does not even know that the user
> type the character *.
 
You're exactly right, I am getting confused.  Thanks for the
explanation of the interaction between the shell and the command.

> > Adding to the apparent inconsistency -- even the root dir has "." and
> > ".." entries.  I would think that if "." and ".." were to provide
> 
> . of / is consistent. It refers to itself.
> 
> .. of / is to make things convenient. Otherwise, you'd have to
> put condition everytime you want to use ..: you'd have to check
> whether the current dir is the / dir. This is inconvenient.

I miss-posted here -- I meant to say that ".." was the inconsistent
bit.  I understand that it is much more useful to / to have ".."; I
just think that the utility is a navigational aid, instead of a file
proper.

Does the mapping of "." to the current directory happen on the
filesystem level, i.e. the directories hash of names to inodes
contains a "." and a ".." entry?

I'll be doing some reading....

Thanks to everyone for straightening me out on this,

Patrick