Re: . and ..

[Andreas Schwab]

Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden> writes:

> C and the shell handle . and .. as part of file name _resolution_.
> They consistently treat "/home/teirllm/bar/../myfile" as a
> *non-simplifiable* file name *until* they resolve the name left to
> right.  There is no processing to be done until we arrive at
> "/home/teirllm/bar" which is a symlink and has to be replaced with
> "home/teirllm/foo/bar" giving "/home/teirllm/foo/bar/../myfile".  The
> next thing to process is .. giving "/home/teirllm/foo/myfile".
>
> Quite often, but not always, Emacs sees things differently from the
> way C, the shell and other programs do.  Namely it first "simplifies"
> the .. away, giving "/home/teirllm/myfile" and then nothing remains to
> simplify, so this is the final result of resolution.

Note that cd (without the -P option) in the POSIX shell works like Emacs.

Andreas.

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Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, address@hidden
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