From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] mv vs cp 
From: forsyth@vitanuova.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <20011009120023.7970219A18@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Date: Tue,  9 Oct 2001 13:05:12 +0100
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0307a7da-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

>>Surely hard links couldn't point to directories, so it was only about
>>alternate paths to leaf objects. Thats not the same as a GOTO loop.

they could, but (at least by 5th eidtion) it was restricted to the super-user.
in fact, that was how directory rename was implemented, by setuid mv using
link and unlink.  races?  argument checking?  ``values of [beta] will give rise to dom!''.
the . and .. names were actual links in the directory, put there by the mkdir command.
the rmdir command did the 3 unlinks (for ., .., and the name itself).