Filename length statistics

Bennett Todd bet at orion.mc.duke.edu
Thu Jun 15 06:51:46 AEST 1989


In article <14749 at duke.cs.duke.edu>, I wrote:
>[...]
>The 14-character long names only handle ~83% of my filenames (this
>includes directory names, and in particular includes "." and ".." for
>every directory, so there is some structural weighting acting against my
>statistics here).

...which is of course completely wrongo. Thanks to Matt Crawford for
pointing this out to me in a very polite letter. Sorry about this
misinformation. Find(1) is of course smart enough to refrain from
reporting "." and ".."; indeed, I shouldn't have even had to check to
see what its behavior is. Upon thinking about it even briefly, it
becomes obvious that many, even most of the uses to which find(1) is put
would be broken if it didn't omit "." and ".." (and emitted them :-).

-Bennett
bet at orion.mc.duke.edu

	(1) Start brain
	(2) Engage mouth
	Do not perform in reverse order.



More information about the Comp.unix.wizards mailing list