pwd

[Brian V. Smith]

In article <265 at zircon.UUCP>, davidb at Pacer.UUCP (David Barts) writes:
< 
< As numerous responses have told me, the system does not maintain
< an open file descriptor into the current working directory.  Rather,
< pwd works its way back up the tree by finding the i number of .
< and searching for the entry under .. whose i-number matches that
< of dot.  Special trickery is needed to handle mount points.
< 
< /bin/pwd is setuid to root so it can handle unreadable directories
< in the path.

This is not true in Ultrix - pwd will fail if it encounters an 
unreadable directory in the path. 

____________________________________
Brian V. Smith    (bvsmith at lbl.gov)
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
I don't speak for LBL, these non-opinions are all mine.