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From: ekrell@hector.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: symbolic links are a botch
Message-ID: <2644@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: Wed, 10-Jun-87 21:42:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.2644
Posted: Wed Jun 10 21:42:06 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jun-87 06:45:05 EDT
References: <2629@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <5962@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2075@emory.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Reply-To: ekrell@ulysses (Eduardo Krell)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 19
Keywords: file system, file name resolution

In article <2075@emory.UUCP> arnold@emory.UUCP (Arnold D. Robbins {EUCC}) writes:

>The kernel need only keep track of the next to last component of the
>pathname used to get into the current directory, not the whole path
>name. This would allow ".." to work,

But "../.." will not. You do need the entire path name if you want to
do it right all the way.

>although it could admittedly
>cause /bin/pwd to give suprising results in some cases. In fact, I don't
>see how the kernel's keeping the full path would help with /bin/pwd.

It won't. What you do then is you make pwd a shell-builtin (like in ksh),
that just echoes $PWD or $cwd or whatever.
    
    Eduardo Krell                   AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill

    {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax}!ulysses!ekrell