Ghost file

[Hans Buurman]

I made a file called "" the other day. That's "\0" in C, an empty string.
(I was abusing elm). Although one could delete it using "rm -i *", there
was no way to read the file. ls told me the file "?" was a plain file.
Cat failed, more and file told me "" was a directory. I couldn't mv, ln or
ln -s the file, etc.

As I really wanted to read the file, I became super user and tried:
link "" foo, and had to reboot the system because it was hanging. Angrily,
I deleted the file.

So now I am wondering: could I have read the file in any way ?
This was on a Sun4 running SunOs 3.2.

	Hans

Disclaimer: any opinions expressed above are my own.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hans Buurman                   | hans at duttnph.UUCP
Pattern Recognition Group      | mcvax!dutrun!duttnph!hans
Faculty of Applied Physics     | tel. 31 - (0) 15 - 78 46 94
Delft University of Technology |
the Netherlands                |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------