From: "Marko Vojinovic" <vvmarko@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, 2010/February/12 20:12
> On Saturday 13 February 2010 00:09:38 Suvayu Ali wrote:
>> On Friday 12 February 2010 06:06 AM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>> > Now, hard links are not allowed for directories since they would allow
>> > for creation of loops (a directory containing itself), which is a Bad
>> > Idea, since it breaks recursion. The filesystem needs to be a *tree* if
>> > recursion is to function, so loops are forbidden (how would you delete
>> > a
>> > directory which contains itself?).
>>
>> I don't quite follow you here, don't you mean hardlinking directories
>> have the risk of introducing recursion?
>
> No, I am saying that hard linking directories allows creation of loop
> structures. These structures break any recursive algorithm that tries to
> go
> "downwards" in some directory structure.
>
> Deleting directories is a textbook example. In order to delete a
> directory,
> you first have to delete all files and subdirectories that it contains,
> and once
> it is empty, delete the directory itself. So deletion goes on via a
> recursive
> algorithm:
>
> 1) check whether there are files or dirs in target dir
> 2) delete any files present
> 3) execute yourself (from step 1) for every subdir as target dir
> 4) target dir is now empty, unlink it
> 5) done
>
> Now consider the directory structure of the form where inside dir a/ you
> have
> dir b/, and inside it dir c/ which is a hard link back to a/ (this is a
> simplest loop situation, much more complicated are possible). IOW, the
> directory a/ contains itself as a subdirectory two levels down. Now
> execute
> the above algorithm in order to delete a/ --- the algorithm will try to
> delete
> all subdirectories, namely b/, and execute itself over b/ in step 3. But
> to
> delete b/, it needs to execute itself over c/ which is actually a/. But to
> delete a/ it needs to execute itself over b/...
It's even worse than that, Marko.
You have a directory tree /a/b/c/d. You create a hard link to directory
/a/b inside of d. You get /a/b/c/d/b/c/d/b/c/d....
NOW you unlink /a/b. Now when you do an ls on /a you get . and .. only.
Now, I challenge you to delete the /b/c/d loop and everything it contains
without reformatting the disk or using low level disk edit functions.
{^_^}
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