[CentOS] mkdir this "." directory
Bob McConnell
rmcconne at lightlink.com
Tue Dec 29 21:06:09 UTC 2009
Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 December 2009 18:21:01 John R Pierce wrote:
>> Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>>> You mean new to the concept of files and directories? This is not
>>> Linux-only. The . and .. existed even in MS-DOS back in the 80's.
>> having an actual . and .. file in a directory is a distinctly Unix
>> practice.
>
> I was not trying to say that . and .. were *invented* in MS-DOS. I was just
> commenting that it is not Linux-specific (or Unix-specific). The point was that
> a newbie would encounter . and .. equally well on both Linux and Windows
> systems. The only difference is that Windows does not encourage the use of a
> terminal, unlike Linux. Therefore, the fact that someone is confused by the
> existence of . in some directory is mainly the fault of GUI-for-everything
> philosophy of Windows.
MS-DOS 2.0 added subdirectories, I/O redirection, pipes, filters and a
few other features copied from Unix. Of course they were mere shadows of
the actual Unix features and lacked most of the standard capabilities,
but it was a step in the right direction. It is one of the few steps in
that direction Microsoft ever took.
Bob McConnell
N2SPP
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