Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:11:12 -0400 | From | David Collier-Brown <> | Subject | Re: directory sort order no longer beginning with "." and ".."? |
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Ray Lee wrote: > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 7:53 AM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> wrote: > >>Oliver Soltys wrote: >> >>>My question: is this a bug, or a feature? I could not find anything about >>>that >>>anywhere... >>> >>>Does anybody have an idea, how I can fix this? Unfortunately, our >>>application >>>can not be changed. >> >>No Unix-like system makes any guarantee about the order of '.' and '..' with >>respect to other directory entries. They've often appeared first as an >>implementation side-effect, but that's highly system and filesystem >>dependent.
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].
I'd recommend either reproducing it or starting a project to hunt down and kill all the programs which assume it (;-))
--dave [1. I helped on the DPS-6 upgrade from v6 to v7, and it was a (dis)feature then] [2. Andy Tannenbaum "Modern Operating Systems", 2nd Edition]
> That's a good idea, though based on his description it's even easier. > The LD_PRELOAD just needs to artificially introduce . and .., at the > beginning and toss them out once it hits them in the list. No sorting > required. -- David Collier-Brown | Always do right. This will gratify Sun Microsystems, Toronto | some people and astonish the rest davecb@sun.com | -- Mark Twain (905) 943-1983, cell: (647) 833-9377, (800) 555-9786 x56583 bridge: (877) 385-4099 code: 506 9191#
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