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From: ka@uw-june.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /bin/test and stat(2)
Message-ID: <3283@uw-june.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Oct-87 18:06:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.3283
Posted: Tue Oct 13 18:06:56 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 04:08:21 EDT
References: <9721@brl-adm.ARPA> <1849@munnari.oz> <6555@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: U of Washington, CSCI, Seattle
Lines: 19

>> "" is the ONLY totally reliable way for a process to access its current
>> directory, "." searches the current directory file the name "." and
>> normally finds an inode which is usually the current directory.  But
>> this is not guaranteed.
> 
> "." IS guaranteed to refer to the current directory, unless your
> filesystem is corrupted, in which case you should fix it (fsck etc.).

Under either System V or 4.3 BSD, do:
	mkdir junk
	cd junk
	rmdir ../junk
	ls .

This will tell you that "." does not exist, because under these versions
of UN*X the entry for "." is removed from a directory when rmdir runs,
rather than when the all the processes using the directory finally finish.
Does this mean that System V and 4.3 BSD don't conform to POSIX?
				Kenneth Almquist