inoe de 1

Frank Mcpherson Frank.Mcpherson at samba.acs.unc.edu
Sat Jan 26 01:42:38 AEST 1991


Not knowing a lot about the implementation of inodes, I can only guess as to
why inode 1 is empty and unnamed.  Sometimes, when people implement a linked 
list or other related data types, they have a dummy header node to the list.
What this does is eliminate the need of handling certain special cases when
adding or deleting to or from the front of the list, which produces more 
easily readable source code.  The overhead of one additional node is 
negligible.  Maybe that's why the first inode is unamed and empty...

-- Frank McPherson                        INTERNET:fmcphers at vttcf.cc.vt.edu



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