On 7/5/11, Eric B. <ebenze@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The strange behaviour here is when listing the parent directory (..).
> In this case, ls .. is listing the contents of Mail/ directory - not
> /home/eric.
>
> In the past, I always recall being able to use the parent identified
> (..) to move up one level in the directory structure whether in a
> symlink or not. In this case, I would have expected ls .. to list the
> contents of /home/eric - not /home/eric/Mail.

I believe it's normal. If I'm not mistaken, cd works based on the
working path i.e. /home/eric/test so cd .. goes to /home/eric

However ls works by reading the .. inode of the directory you're in,
which will always point to the real parent /home/eric/Mail no matter
how you got to that directory.

That's correct and it's the behavior most people seem to prefer.

To change it use `set -o physical` in Bash.