On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Andy Goth wrote:
> > That's exactly the intention, because there sort of IS a file (or, more
> > accruately, a directory) called simply ".".
>
> Oh yeah. I forgot.
>
> > If you type "ls -a" from any directory in Linux, the first two things you'll
> > see are "./" and "../". ./ always refers to the current directory, and ../
> > always refers to the directory directly above the current directory. It works
> > the same way in DOS I believe.
> >
> > So if you type "tar cfz /tmp/backup.tgz ." from /home/username, it's actually
> > the same as typing "tar cfz /tmp/backup.tgz /home/username" just more concise.
> > Tarring the directory itself also has the convenient effect of tarring
> > -everything- within the directory, hidden or unhidden, without having to use
> > wildcards.
>
> Uh huh.
>
A better example would be compareing
ls .
and
ls *
