Dot files always first in directory?

[DoN Nichols]

	Sorry about no quote from original msg, but with this mailer and
the Wizards-Stuff coming in digest form, that is a royal pain.  Also,
the response has been delayed by a constipation of the net between
sem.brl.mil and here.

	As a real example of a case where '.' and '..' are not in a
standard order, take the case of a mew 'mkdir(1)' posted to the net
about a year ago. (Not sure of the original date, but it was from
Dominick Samperi (nyu.edu!manhat!samperi) or (rutgers!hombre!samperi).

	This mkdir had the option of making all necessary intermediate
directrories between you and the directory specified.  This seemed like
a 'good thing', so I compiled it, and put it into service.

	This system (not the one from which I am posting) is an old
V7-based one by UniSoft, and has a program called 'vchk(1)', which
goes thru checking permissions, ownership, version numbers, etc.  (It
also could optionally update the system from another one if the other
one were within communication range.)  Anyway, next time I ran vchk, it
started spitting out lots of complaints about "entries for '.' and '..'
screwed up!".  A check with od showed that the two entries were
exchanged, so that '..' was before '.'.  This wouldn't break the program
in question, but still was non-standard, and an indication not to trust
*ANYTHING* which is not enforced by the kernal *ON ALL SYSTEMS*.

	The program was sufficiently useful so I took the time to fix
the offending code, and still use it.  If it weren't for 'vchk(1)', I
probably would never have known of the problem.  I never reported to the
author, because my mailer has trouble with bang-paths, and I don't know
how to mail to him, but if he is interested, and can give me a
domain-path which I can reach from milnet, I will be glad to send him
diffs.

				Good Luck
				DoN. (nvt9001 at belvoir-emh3.army.mil)