Robert Elz <k...@munnari.oz.au> wrote:
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2018 12:14:10 +0200
> From: Joerg Schilling <joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
> Message-ID:
> <5ae1a672./4ygttwmklqba1r4%joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
>
> | . and .. are artefacts of an implementation detail from the 1970s
> | and only present because this did save code space.
>
> I think the designers of the original unix filesystems would disagree.
> They're present to make the filesystem regular and not require
> special cases in all code everywhere - you can regard that as
> "save code space" I suppose - but the size of the code was not
> the issue, rather the requirement that everyone write code to
> deal with "in the parent diretory, ..." rather than allowing the file
> system to simply make it work.
This is a miss interpretation.
The reason was just to avoid a mkdir() syscall.
It is simple to write an interpreter in the kernel that understands the meaning
of the special files . and .. while doing path name resolution.
Jörg
--
EMail:jo...@schily.net (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
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