Curious Sunday Morning Linux File System Question ??

[David L. Gehrt]

<snip>

> > 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.

I object to the repeated references to things "Ancient" on this thread.
I am retired and have gray hair, but I do not feel Ancient!! :-)

> It seems everybody has to do that once.  I know I did.

<snip>


I had my first brush with UNIX in the early `80s.  At that time almost
all systems had hard copy operator's consoles, and it was not that far
removed in time from users using similar devices to interact with the
systems.

Running an 'ls' took a measurable amount of time and a quantity of paper
so it made sense NOT to include the 'dot' files in the
listings. After all they do not change that much and so are typically
not that interesting.

(personally I have 'dot' files with a lat mod date in 1997)

dlg