On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 11:57:04AM +0200, Björn Persson wrote:
> Nifty Hat Mitch wrote:
>
> >On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 06:14:56PM -0700, Deepak Oberoi wrote:
> >
> >>what is the differecne between the following?
> >>. /etc/sysconfig/sendmail
> >>and
> >>./etc/... (i know if the "." is followed by "/" then
> >
> >This is a good question. You will see the " . file " construct
> >used in lots of system shell scripts.
....
> Note that the "./directory/file" syntax isn't only used in shell
> scripts. Nor is it specifically for executing programs. It's simply a
> way to reference a file relative to the current directory. "." is the
> current directory, "./file" is a file in the current directory, and
> "./directory/file" is a file in a subdirectory of the current directory.
Absolutly. The concept of . as the current or present working
directory is a critical one. See the man page for pwd. New users to
Linux and Unix should note the importance of two special links for
directories ( . and .. ). Note that these are standard and special
links (references) to a specific inode. Dot and DotDot make it
possible to move about in the directory tree of the filesystem.
$ mkdir one
$ls -lia
total 60
493624 drwxrwxr-x 3 bob bob 4096 Sep 8 11:15 .
212993 drwxrwxrwt 20 root root 40960 Sep 8 11:14 ..
493625 drwxrwxr-x 2 bob bob 4096 Sep 8 11:15 one
$ cd one
$ ls -lia
total 16
493625 drwxrwxr-x 2 bob bob 4096 Sep 8 11:15 .
493624 drwxrwxr-x 3 bob bob 4096 Sep 8 11:15 ..
This is an IMPORTANT and fundimental concept. I am glad that Björn
reminded me how important it it.
Recommended reading "The UNIX Programming Environment, Kernighan and Pike"
--
T o m M i t c h e l l
Just say no to 74LS73 in 2004
