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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Navigating directories with * / . and .. Post 302758359 by Don Cragun on Saturday 19th of January 2013 05:17:42 AM
Old 01-19-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by bloodrule
Thanks - that helps a lot.

So how does" */./" differ from "*/." ? I seem to get slightly different results with each and still can't quite see why.

Also I understand that * and ? are called wildcards. But what are . .. and / called?
The pathname pattern * expands to the list of files in the current directory whose names do not have a period (.) as the first character in their name.

The pathname pattern */ expands to the list of directories in the current directory whose names do not have a period as the first character in their name. (Note that a directory is one type of file. Other types of files found on all UNIX and Linux systems include regular files, block special files, character special files, sockets, named pipes (AKA FIFO special files), and symbolic links. Most UNIX and Linux systems have more file types.)

The pathname pattern */. expands to the list of files named . (AKA dot in this context) in the directories named by the expansion of */.

The pathname pattern */./ expands to the list of files of type directory named . in the directories named by the expansion of */.

The pathname patterns */, */. and */./ expand to the same list of files since dot is always a name of the directory in which it is located (unless the filesystem has been corrupted), but they cannot always be treated as synonyms. For example the command:
Code:
rmdir */

will remove all empty directories in the current working directory that you have permission to remove, and will print diagnostic messages for directories that are not empty and for directories that you don't have permission to remove, but the command:
Code:
rmdir */.

will not remove any directories and will give you a diagnostic message (saying you can't remove . for each of the directories named by the expansion of */..

The file named . (AKA dot) is the current working directory. The file named .. (AKA dot-dot) is the parent directory of the current working directory. The file named / (AKA root) is the root directory for the hierarchy of files on the system available to the current process. In the root directory, . and .. may be different names for the same directory.
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