/../... (Re: What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?)

[John Robert LoVerso]

In article <3028 at rti.UUCP>, mcm at rti.UUCP (Mike Mitchell) writes:
> What happens if you unlink the '..' entry in the '/' directory
> and mkdir a directory called '..'?  I'll tell you what happens.  You get a
> directory called '..' accessible from '/'.  You can now chdir to '/..' and
> get to a new directory.

This is exactly the scheme used by CMU's RFS (as included with MACH).
`/' is the root, but `/..' is the the sticky concept of `super-root'.
As I understand it, the actual `root' used for booting (at least for
MACH on the Multimax) is in `/../.LOCALROOT'.

John