From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com (Dennis Ritchie)
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 00:17:52 -0400
Subject: [TUHS] The nameless horror of dotfiles [was (no subject)]
Message-ID: <c799721951ed6dacbac364b8dcd0ef78@plan9.bell-labs.com>

The omniscient Norman seems to have nailed me:

 > Judging by the manuals, Research did it first.  In every manual from
 > 1/e to 6/e, the entry for ls(I) has this description for the -a option:

 > 	list all entries; usually those beginning with "." are suppressed

I suspect that in v7 (where .thing was indeed listed by default)
we decided that since .thing was a real file in the
directory it was better to list it instead of hiding it
by default.  (Seeing . and .. seemed  seldom interesting,
however).

I was solely (and much more recently) responsible for the lack
of subject header in my earlier reply.

	Dennis