large link to /usr/bin/X11

[MirJafar Ali]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 2:19 PM, J <dreadpiratejeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 14:38, MirJafar Ali <mirjafarali at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I had downloaded 32 bit Ubuntu 9.10 and noticed that it has very long
> empty
> > link to /usr/bin/X11. Please
> > see the following command to understand what I mean.
> >
> > crash-06:/usr/bin/X11/X11/X11/X11$
> >
> > I can go forever cd X11 and it will have another X11 directory and when I
> > give
> >
>
> >
> > Can someone tell what is happening ?
>
> It's not a real long link... it's a recursive symlink...
>
> > crash-06:/usr/bin/X11/X11/X11/X11$ ls -al X11
> > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 2010-03-10 11:39 X11 -> .
>
> Notice, the symlink X11 points to . which is the current working
> directory...  I think the ability to continuously cd into X11 and
> having it tack on an additional X11 to $PWD is just an effect of doing
> this in BASH (not sure if the same behaviour would be seen in other
> shells).
>
> Either way, every time you cd into X11 you are cd-ing into the current
> directory...
>
> My best guess (and I actually got this from someone I work with) was
> that this was done to allow users (and other programs) to call X apps
> by using /usr/bin/X11/Xfoo for legacy purposes...
>
> At one point in the past, there actually WAS an X11 directory that had
> all the GUI apps, while the others went into /usr/bin.
>
> I have a feeling this is more a legacy throwback to when X was
> XFree86, prior to the move to Xorg.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff
>
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Is there any way to find number of unique files in the Linux system  without
such recursive
link ?   I am not sure what happens at "inode" entry with such links ?


Mir.
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