Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mcgill-vision!mouse
From: mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: A suggestion: .... == ../../..
Message-ID: <1081@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Date: 26 Apr 88 21:47:44 GMT
References: <75@vertical.oz> <4221@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com>
Organization: McGill University, Montreal
Lines: 19

In article <4221@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com>, barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) writes:
> In article <75@vertical.oz> greg@vertical.oz (Greg Bond) writes:
>> This generalises: . = current dir, .. = parent dir, ... = grandparent etc.
>> This could be done in the shells [...]. It would more usefully be
>> done in the kernel routine (namei?) that maps names to inodes (where
>> the symbolic links are traversed).
> The beauty of the current implemenetation is that the file system
> does most of the work.  That is, the files '.' and '..' are really
> there.

Only sort of.  .. must be special-cased to make it work properly across
mount points, and I would be surprised to find that . is not
special-cased.  A dozen bytes of code in the kernel is cheaper than
actually going to the disk to follow . when you see it.

					der Mouse

			uucp: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp
			arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu