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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5
Subject: Re: Unlinking "."
Message-ID: <5741@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 10-Apr-87 06:14:12 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5741
Posted: Fri Apr 10 06:14:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 23:45:30 EST
References: <1059@cci632.UUCP> <5715@brl-smoke.ARPA> <736@killer.UUCP> <16186@sun.uucp> <753@killer.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13
Keywords: unlink

In article <753@killer.UUCP> jfh@killer.UUCP (John Haugh) writes:
>... but if the
>mkdir(2) and rmdir(2) require you to be root in the first place ...

But they don't, and that's a very important reason for having them.

>...  The applications they
>develope are written to use the minimal subset of features from all Unix
>versions.

But that's pretty minimal indeed (it doesn't include any special
terminal handling, for example).  One of the goals of POSIX (IEEE
1003 standard) is to provide a more functional base than that.