Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!dutrun!hans
From: hans@duttnph.UUCP (Hans Buurman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ghost file
Summary: now we're getting somewhere....
Message-ID: <556@dutrun.UUCP>
Date: 26 Nov 88 11:02:44 GMT
References: <17529@adm.BRL.MIL> <8430@alice.UUCP> <169@pinn.UUCP> <303@bilver.UUCP> <489@auspex.UUCP> <550@dutrun.UUCP> <512@auspex.UUCP>
Sender: tnphnws@dutrun.UUCP
Reply-To: hans@duttnph.UUCP (Hans Buurman)
Organization: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Lines: 33

In article <512@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
>>I made a file called "" the other day. That's "\0" in C, an empty
>>string.
>
>No, you didn't.  You did something else.  A null pathname in most
>systems is either
>	1) a synonym for the current directory
>or
>	2) an illegal pathname.
>In SunOS, it's a synonym for the current directory.

This is interesting. What I did was, when asked under what name to save
mail, enter return on an empty field, assuming that elm would use some
default. It apparently did not.

Who assumes "\0" is a synonym for "." ? The kernel, open(2),... ?

The file I created was shown by ls -l as "-rw-r----    ?", but file(1) said
it was a directory. It was in my home directory, and cd "" kept me there.
As my home directory is rather full, I couldn't make anything out of an
od of it.

I don't remember the size of the file, and I cannot reproduce it.
Any idea what happened ?

	Hans

Disclaimer: any opinions expressed above are my own.
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