Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!ukma!husc6!ogccse!littlei!omepd!merlyn
From: merlyn@intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: giving mouth-to-mouth to a dead horse (was Re: Dot files always first in directory?)
Summary: first, a mess in the C group, and now in WIZARDS?  Sheesh.
Message-ID: <4386@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 6 May 89 23:09:43 GMT
References: <11108@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3540@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> <2778@buengc.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: merlyn@intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via BiiN, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)

In article <2778@buengc.BU.EDU>, bph@buengc (Blair P. Houghton) 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.  The ascii characters that will do this are space, !, ", #, $, %,
| &, ', (, ), *, +, ,, and -.  I haven't tried it, but I bet you can get the
| nonprinting ascii characters to do it too.  There are 32 of those.

Nope (he says, donning the usual asbestos suit...),

the original requestor was using opendir/readdir.  These routines have
*NOTHING* to do with ASCII sorting order, but rather return the order
of files in the underlying directory.  The original statement
(paraphrased) was "Can I assume that . and .., having generally been
created first, can be safely skipped while scanning the directory *IN
DIRECTORY ORDER* without possibly fouling up?"

The answer, apparently (according to the half dozen responses arriving
here) is *no*.

Your response is the right answer to the *wrong question* -- the
question you answered was "can I get a filename that sorts before the
'.' and '..' entry if I say 'ls -a'?".

(Maybe if you try adding the filenames... no... nevermind... :-)

P.S. Note the yet-again updated sig.  BiiN just killed all contractors
and temps -- stay tuned for the dismantling :-)
--
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095===\
{ on contract to BiiN, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, until 14 May 1989     }
{ <merlyn@intelob.intel.com> ...!uunet!tektronix!biin!merlyn         }
{ or try <merlyn@agora.hf.intel.com> after 15 May 1989               }
\=Cute quote: "Welcome to Oregon... home of the California Raisins!"=/