Backup and hidden files?

[Jerry Feldman]

The tilde is normally appended to the file name by emacs. It is not a 
hidden file in linux. Hidden files in Unix and Linux begin with a dot. 
There are no hidden file attributes. Also, the Linux and Unix file systems 
differ from DOS and windows significantly.
A (Linux and Unix) file is an entry in a table called an inode. When the 
file is created, the file name is placed into a directory. All the 
directory does is associate the name with an inode. The ln command (without 
the -s option) creates what is referred to as a hard link. All it does it 
to create a name in a directory, and update the file's use count. The file 
is not deleted until the use count goes to zero. The directory contains no 
information about a file other than its name and inode. All the file 
attributes are in the inode table. You can actually remove a file name from 
a directory without actually removing the physical file. (When file names 
were fixed length, you could actually use a text editor to do this). When 
the fsck utility runs, it can detect files without names, and it creates a 
name for that file in the lost+found directory, which is always created 
when you make a new file system.
"Kevin M. Gleason" wrote:
> I created a file with cat and appended the file a little latter. When I
> went to list the file (ls -a) it produced the following list:
> 
> ./filename
> ./filename~
> filename
> 
> where filename is replaced by the actual name. Are both of the ./ files
> hidden with the one with the tilde (~) a backup? I guess I'm too
> literal, but inquiring minds want to know!
> 
> Kevin
> 
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-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org


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