On Aug 13, 2011, at 12:23 PM, Patrick James wrote:
> In every directory shown in there browser there are two "folders" (okay
> "directories") one has a single full-stop only as its name, the other has two
> full-stops as its name. (In US english "full-stop" is called a "period").
> I only see them in BBEdit. I had Transmit for a while on a trial basis and it
> did not show these folders when it was set to show invisibles.
> It is not a very big issue of course, I am just wondering why they are there
> :)
These are magic directory entries, and are presented and handled by the various
UNIX directory-reading libraries. The directory "." means "the current
directory" and ".." means "the previous directory. They let you construct
paths like /Users/pjlist/Library/Preferences/../Application Support/./BBEdit
These are conveniences that make locating files from a script or an application
easier.
Transmit is simply hiding them - if you use Transmit's "show transcript" you
will see them listed, and also if you type "ls -al" from the Terminal on your
Mac you will see them at the top of the list.
There's some information in the dir(5) manpage:
Each directory file contains two special directory entries; one is a
pointer to the directory itself
called dot `.' and the other a pointer to its parent directory called
dot-dot `..'. Dot and dot-dot
are valid pathnames, however, the system root directory `/', has no parent
and dot-dot points to
itself like dot.
--Jim
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