Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!indri!aplcen!osiris!consult
From: consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Dot files always first in directory?
Message-ID: <2892@osiris.UUCP>
Date: 5 May 89 15:00:18 GMT
References: <11108@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3540@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> <2778@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: consult@osiris.UUCP (Unix Consultation Mailbox (Phil))
Organization: The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Information Systems
Lines: 19

In article <2778@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <3540@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> conan@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Robert B Carroll) writes:
>>NO, its not save to assume that.
>>try "touch #abcd" then 'list' the directory.
>
>To beat this horse quite dead, any leading character that would sort before
>the period will place the filename before the . and .. in a directory
>listing.

That ain't no horse, it's a red herring.

The order of files in a "directory listing" (using ls, which by default
sorts everything by ASCII collating sequence before writing it to stdout)
has nothing to do with the real order of the files in the directory.  You
can only force that order by writing the directory yourself, which is
something permitted only to root and not recommended anyway.


phil