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From: jv@mhres.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Symbolic Links
Message-ID: <1254@mhres.mh.nl>
Date: Tue, 1-Sep-87 15:40:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhres.1254
Posted: Tue Sep  1 15:40:18 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Sep-87 06:05:31 EDT
References: <8731@brl-adm.ARPA> <2789@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <1781@munnari.oz> <2878@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <1804@munnari.oz>
Reply-To: jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans)
Organization: Multihouse N.V., The Netherlands
Lines: 31

Don't flame me if I missed the point, but ... as a Unix user ...

At any moment, I can issue the command "pwd" which gives me the
current directory. If I am at "/usr/include/sys" then I can deduce what
my parent is by removing the last element of the name of the current
directory (in the above example: "/usr/include"). Sounds consistent
and easy to me.

Imagine, my system (HP9000/530 with HP-UX, a very good System V.2 with
Berkeley enhancements) does not have "." and "..":

%ls -al
total 158
-rw-------   1 jv       bsp          422 Apr  1 19:41 .login
-rw-rw-rw-   1 jv       bsp          263 Sep  1 13:32 .newsrc
-rw-rw-rw-   1 jv       bsp            0 Sep  1 13:36 .pnewsexpert
-rw-rw-rw-   1 jv       bsp           26 Sep  1 13:31 .rnlast
-rw-rw-rw-   1 jv       bsp           58 Aug 27 09:49 .rnsoft
-rw-r--r--   1 jv       bsp           14 May 23 23:04 .signature
drwxrwxrwx   1 jv       bsp            0 Aug 18 09:39 News
drwxr-xr-x   1 jv       bsp          504 Jun 13 01:05 icon
drwxr-xr-x   1 jv       bsp          912 Sep  1 13:31 maildir
%

No dot, no dot-dot, and directories have only one link ... Of course, you
can access "." and ".." from system calls - it will do what you expect.

-- 
Johan Vromans                           | jv@mh.nl via European backbone
Multihouse N.V., Gouda, the Netherlands | uucp: ..{seismo!}mcvax!mh.nl!jv
"It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"