Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!dkuug!freja!seindal
From: seindal@freja.dk (Rene' Seindal)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: . file question (bug?)
Message-ID: <3962@freja.dk>
Date: 6 Aug 88 02:38:16 GMT
References: <1670002@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK
Lines: 23

In article <1670002@hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:

>When does the "." file, which describes the current directory,
>get updated?  Only when you do an fsck?  

>In the following example, I created a directory and make 2 files.
>After deleting one of the files, the "." file thought that they
>were both still there.  Is this a bug???

>This is on HP-UX 6.01, ksh, running on an HP 9000/350.

>-Ted

[long example deleted]

No.  It is not a bug.  Directories consist of (file-name, inode) pairs, and
when you delete a file, only the inode part gets cleared.  Therefore strings
will keep showing the name, at least until the directory slot is reused.

Try to create a file with a shorter name that the first.  That ought to
overwrite the name, because the slot would be reused.

Rene' Seindal, DIKU, U. of Copenhagen, Denmark. (seindal@diku.dk)