RE: purpose of "." entry in a diretory

["Nori, Soma Sekhar" <nsekhar@xxxxxx>]

> Let me rephrase my question a little bit: BESIDES the obvious 
> usage of "." entry, in terms of the filesystem, what is the 
> purpose of "." entry?
> 
> The obvious answer is that you can refer to the current 
> directory using "./", however, in order to look up the "." 
> entry, the kernel must have a knowledge of the current 
> directory in the first place, doesn't it? The kernel needs 
> the directory table for the current directory to look up 
> which inode the "." entry refers to. Doesn't that seem a 
> little redundant, since the kernel already knows what the 
> current directory is?
> If the kernel is already caching the current directory table, 
> it might as well just cache the current directory's inode.
> 
> Coming back to my original question, does the kernel really 
> need that "." entry? or is it purely for the user convenience?
> 
See: http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt20050404_305.html#4

-
Sekhar Nori.
 

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