On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:13:18AM -0400, William Case wrote: > Hi All; > > Just did some changes in my ~/.* ( dot files ) and started wondering why > Linux uses dot files for its 'user' data. Its a small annoyance to have > to specify .* each time I use them. The annoyance is primarily not > because it's difficult but because it is odd -- different from anything > else and data files get mixed (kinda) with my working documents. Why > not just have a standard additional directory for 'config', or whatever > name, to hold all the user application type data. Is the reason > historical or is there a pragmatic purpose? Both. It's an ancient and honorable Unix tradition based on the notion that .* files don't normally get into shell expansions. So "rm ~/*" won't eat all your config files. It would not be easy to move all the dot files into a config directory. You would have to co-ordinate that across thousands of apps and dozens of different Unixes. I think we can depend on $HOME being available on most Unixes. Getting $HOME/config adopted would be a major effort. I recommend against putting your own working documents into your home directory. Instead make one or more sub-directories for them. I have "business" for business related stuff, invoices and the like, "projects" and "src", for source code. Each has sub-directories for individual projects. I find it helps that when I'm working on a given project I only see the files related to that project. This also means that things in ~ tend to be expendable, making pruning the cruft very easy. > > I am not a complete newbie. After 2 1/2 years of using Linux I am kind > of a 'gubie' or 'newru'. (Newbie on the way to becoming a guru). So if > you have an explanation that involves more than newbie baby talk, I can > handle it. Uh, "gnubie"? -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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