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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers is /. superfluous? why not just say / ? Post 302079046 by james hanley on Thursday 6th of July 2006 01:43:37 PM
Old 07-06-2006
you say in many contexts they're the same. But is there any case you can name where /. is not the same as / ? e.g. one works and the other doesn't?

note-
But regarding your use of the term 'current directory'
dot is a pointer to some directory not necessarily the current one. If you're in /home/blob/ and you do ls /. then the current directory is still /home/blob/
(pwd displays current directory, so that defines current directory) The / directory is just the one that ls is called on. I don't know of another term for the directory passed as an argument/parameter to a command. It's not (necessarily) the current/working directory. It could be any directory.
 

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pwd(1)							      General Commands Manual							    pwd(1)

NAME
pwd - working directory name SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
prints the path name of the working (current) directory. Options recognizes the following options: Display the directory with the name of the symbolic link if any. If the environment variable contains an absolute path name of the current directory that does not contain the file names (dot) or (dot-dot), writes this path name to standard output. Otherwise, the option behaves like the option. Display the actual physical directory path. Directories of symbolic link types are not displayed. If both and are specified, the last one applies. If neither nor is specified, the default option is: from UNIX 2003 environment onwards; see standards(5). otherwise. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
For information about the UNIX Standard environment, see standards(5). Environment Variables determines the language in which messages are displayed. If is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of is used as a default for each unspecified or empty vari- able. If is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead of If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See environ(5). International Code Set Support Single- and multibyte character code sets are supported. DIAGNOSTICS
Possible file system trouble; contact system administrator. Current directory has been removed (usually by a different process). Use command to move to a valid directory (see cd(1)). EXAMPLES
If your home directory is and the command is executed from the home directory, typing produces the following display: In the following example, a symbolic link, points to the directory. Then the command displays the actual directory: The command displays the directory with the symbolic link: In the following example, there is no symbolic link. The displayed directory is the same for both the and options. AUTHOR
was developed by AT&T and HP. SEE ALSO
cd(1), csh(1), sh(1), sh-posix(1), standards(5). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
pwd(1)
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