I dont understand why ".." isnt working the same way for "ls" and "cd" when inside a symbolic link. The reason I ask is that I made a link to a directory with some scripts that saves output in "../output.txt" and I could not find the output until I found that ".." isnt the directory you see when you do a $pwd. I solved the problem by making a directory and then make a link to each script in there.
I would just like to know: 1) if there is a good reason to this behaviour. 2) if there is a rule, so you know when ".." is level up from $ pwd and when it is one level up from the link target. 3) if there is an alternativ way to point to the parent directory.
Personally I can't see why you would ever need ".." to be one level up from the link target.
Example: $ ln -s /home link_to_home; cd link_to_home
$ ls .. bin dev home lib misc
$ cd ..;ls link_to_home
Have a nice weekend Ulrik