linux-kernel - Re: directory sort order no longer beginning with "." and ".."?

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Message-ID: <488F523C.7090201@goop.org>
Date:	Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:24:12 -0700
From:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
To:	davecb@....com
CC:	Ray Lee <ray-lk@...rabbit.org>, Oliver.Soltys@...l.renesas.com,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: directory sort order no longer beginning with "." and ".."?

David Collier-Brown wrote:
> Alas, this implementation side-effect dates back to v6[1], and is so
> depended upon that even  CD filesystems, which are by no means Unix-like,
> contain dummy "." and ".." entries[2].

Er, no, I wouldn't call '.' and '..' implementation side-effects in 
themselves.  They're one of the particularly clever parts of the 
filesystem/namespace design.  I would agree that the specific 
implementation using "link" and "unlink" was a bit of a hack, and adding 
proper "mkdir" and "rmdir" made the world a better place.

>  I'd recommend either reproducing it or starting a project
> to hunt down and kill all the programs which assume it (;-))

Well, '.' and '..' are guaranteed to be somewhere in a (linked) 
directory, so all filesystems are required to make sure they exist 
somewhere, and programs which expect them to exist are perfectly within 
their rights.  But not necessarily the first two entries.

    J
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