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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: /bin/pwd
Message-ID: <13858@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 14 Sep 90 19:37:40 GMT
References: <2488@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <13851@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2497@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <2497@idunno.Princeton.EDU> pfalstad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul John Falstad) writes:
-In article <13851@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
->No, on most systems there is no easier way than the obvious one of
->seeing where a succession of ".."s gets you.
-That was what I considered "the easy way."  But how do you do that?
-For example, how do you find out the name of "."?  You could find out
-its inode, and then check the previous directory to see which name
-matches its inode; but that only works until you get to the root of the
-filesystem your directory is mounted in (I don't mean "/").  What then?  Do
-you have to check /etc/mtab?

Yes, you got it, exactly.