> On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, pAb-032871 wrote:
> >On many FTP servers, you may notice two "directories" [I think
>
> They _are_ directories.
>
> >that's what they are] in every listing, named "." and ".." Entering
> >"." puts you in the current directory [possibly a refreshed listing?],
> >and ".." moves you up one directory. The system might put these
> >here automatically for some reason, I don't know much about it.
>
> They are simply directory entries. ".." refers up one, and "." is the
> current directory.. (Hmm, I was thinking that ".." may be a soft link
> to the upper directory, but I guess not.. I was thinking it was then
> maybe a hard link...
>
. and .. *are* hard links, modulo the magic that happens at device boundaries
on unicies. A direct effetc of this is that you can compute hte number of
subdriectoires of a directory as <reference count>-2 (in the rout diretcory .
and .. are the same directory). As with all hard links they repesent a device
and inode combination. There is no preference for any of the various names
that refer to a given device and inode combination. Symbolic links are
genuinely different.
--
Duncan (-:
"software industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is
legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems."
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