Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 01:42:44 +0200
From: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>
To: Jesse Pollard <jesse@cats-chateau.net>
Cc: beepy@netapp.com, aebr@win.tue.nl, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: FS: hardlinks on directories
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On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:29:50 -0500
Jesse Pollard <jesse@cats-chateau.net> wrote:

> On Monday 04 August 2003 10:56, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 08:42:09 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> > Brian Pawlowski <beepy@netapp.com> wrote:
> > > I'm still waking up, but '..' obviously breaks the "no cycle"
> > > observations.
> >
> > Hear, hear ...
> >
> > > It's just that '..' is well known name by utilities as opposed
> > > to arbitrary links.
> >
> > Well, that leads only to the point that ".." implementation is just lousy
> > and it should have been done right in the first place. If there is a need
> > for a loop or a hardlink (like "..") all you have to have is a standard way
> > to find out, be it flags or the like, whatever. But taking the filename or
> > anything not applicable to other cases as matching factor was obviously
> > short-sighted.
> 
> Has nothing to do with the loop. It is called an AVL tree.

Hm, ".." points back to a directory in its parent path (in fact simply its own
parent). You don't call this a loop? How come?

If I write a simple program that follows all directory entries of a given
directory it will simply loop, it only won't loop if I tell it explicitely
_not_ to follow ".." and ".", because "." is nothing else but the shortest
possible loop.

Regards,
Stephan
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