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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5
Subject: Re: Unlinking "."
Message-ID: <5715@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 1-Apr-87 17:56:43 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5715
Posted: Wed Apr  1 17:56:43 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 08:22:50 EST
References: <1059@cci632.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13
Keywords: unlink

In article <1059@cci632.UUCP> rrw@cci632.UUCP (Rick Wessman) writes:
>In our version of Unix*, PERPOS**, it is legal to remove ".", and there
>is a raging controversy about whether it should be.

Since directories in the Unix file system are required to have "."
and ".." entries, it does not make sense to permit their removal.

The best solution would seem to be to use system calls to create
and remove directories, instead of super-user privileged processes
that invoke link(2) and unlink(2).  This also lets you avoid race
conditions that the latter approach is heir to.

Current BSD and System V releases have mkdir(2) and rmdir(2) calls.