. file question (bug?)

[Rene' Seindal]

In article <1670002 at hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj at hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:

>When does the "." file, which describes the current directory,
>get updated?  Only when you do an fsck?  

>In the following example, I created a directory and make 2 files.
>After deleting one of the files, the "." file thought that they
>were both still there.  Is this a bug???

>This is on HP-UX 6.01, ksh, running on an HP 9000/350.

>-Ted

[long example deleted]

No.  It is not a bug.  Directories consist of (file-name, inode) pairs, and
when you delete a file, only the inode part gets cleared.  Therefore strings
will keep showing the name, at least until the directory slot is reused.

Try to create a file with a shorter name that the first.  That ought to
overwrite the name, because the slot would be reused.

Rene' Seindal, DIKU, U. of Copenhagen, Denmark. (seindal at diku.dk)