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From: franco@MIKEY.BBN.COM (Frank A. Lonigro)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: /bin/test and stat(2)
Message-ID: <9767@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 12:14:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9767
Posted: Wed Oct 14 12:14:17 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Oct-87 00:47:04 EDT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
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	Thanks very much to those of you who answered my questions with
intelligence.  I have a couple more.

	Just thought I'd let you know that I found the manual page on
the description of a path name but found it very contradictory.  Here
is an excerpt from the BSD manual page:

     File Name
          Names consisting of up to {FILENAME_MAX} characters may
          be used to name an ordinary file, special file, or
          directory.

          These characters may be selected from the set of all
          ASCII characters excluding 0 (null) and the ASCII code
          for / (slash).  (The parity bit, bit 8, must be 0.)

          Note that it is generally unwise to use *, ?, or [ ] as
          part of file names because of the special meaning
          attached to these characters by the shell.

     Path Name
          A path name is a null-terminated character string
          starting with an optional slash (/), followed by zero
          or more directory names separated by slashes, option-
          ally followed by a file name.  The total length of a
          path name must be less than {PATHNAME_MAX} characters.

          If a path name begins with a slash, the path search
          begins at the root directory.  Otherwise, the search
          begins from the current working directory.  A slash by
          itself names the root directory.  A null pathname
          refers to the current directory.

According to the naming convention of file names, all ASCII chars can be
used except a NULL or the slash.  This convention includes the naming of
directories.  So, how can a null string be considered a file name, let
alone a directory, and why should there be two ways to refer to the same
thing (the current directory)?  It really doesn't make sense!

Sorry for more questions, and thanks for pointing me to the documentation.
-franco