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On 2014-12-29 14:01, Gil Dawson wrote:
I'm having a little problem understanding the Unix terminology. You may find Chapter 2 of the freely available book "The Linux Command Line" ( http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php ) to be helpful. Although this book is about Linux, not MacOS X, both are based on Unix. This paragraph has me stumped. Configuration and log files are files, whereas pathnames can point to anything. So although it may be confusing, I think that "filename" is the correct terminology here. The filename may be just the name of a file without any directory component, or it may include a relative directory component or an absolute directory component. Examples: Simple filename: extra-stuff.conf (look for the file "extra-stuff.conf" inside the current directory) With relative directory: my-stuff/extra-stuff.conf (look for the file "extra-stuff.conf" inside the directory "my-stuff" which in turn is in the current directory"). Note that this is the same as ./my-stuff/extra-stuff.conf Another example with a relative directory: ../../another-place/extra-stuff.conf (go up two directory levels from the current directory, then into the directory "another-place" and then the file is extra-stuff.conf). Absolute directory component: /private/etc/apache2/extra-stuff.conf
/private/var/log/apache2/foo_log" *does* begin with "/". You're trying to make too much of a distinction between pathnames and filenames. "/usr//private/..."-- What is the meaning of "//" in this context? It has no meaning, extra slashes between directory components are ignored. This lets scripts and other programs construct filenames without having to detect and remove extraneous slashes; if a script always adds a slash, it will be there when needed and won't cause problems if it is not needed. The following are all equivalent: /usr/private /usr//private /usr/private/ /////usr/////private///// For more reading, see http://teaching.idallen.com/cst8207/12f/notes/160_pathnames.html -- Mark Montague mark@xxxxxxxxxxx |
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