26 Apr
2018
26 Apr
'18
4:09 a.m.
Hi Bill,
I think it’s a bit more interesting to uncover why rm
does not remove
directories by default thereby obviating the need for rmdir
Well, I'd guess it's: rm just does a single unlink to decrement an
inode's reference count by one, actually increment it since they were
negative, whereas rmdir on an empty directory needs to do two
decrements, one for its directory entry in the parent, and one for `..'.
(I think hard links could apply to directories in the early days, until
it made things too awkward, e.g. du(1) and cycles.)
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy