[techtalk] Re: od

[Laurel Fan]

List seems to have lost its [flags]...

Excerpts from linuxchix: 15-Mar-100 od by Phil Savoie at learnix.ca 
> I have a question with regards to od.  In Solaris, the command "od -c ." 
> will give ascii representation to the file names that are held by the 
> directory. In RH6.1 this same command does not work the same way.

Probably because linux doesn't let you read() a directory.  Actually,
it's technically ext2fs that does that.  Some other filesystems, like afs,
on Solaris, also do that.

> I have 
> to use the following "od -c *" which after reading the man page, gives 
> information about the *contents* of the file.  Is there a similar command 
> in RH6.1, that when given, will display actual filenames in ascii that are 
> held in the directory?

Um, ls? ;)
If that's too easy, you could strace ls and see how it gets its
information.
  
> The reason I'm asking is that I realize that the inode table does not
> carry information about the filename but the directory in which file
> is written to does.  I just want verify this.

Try looking at the getdents syscall, or the relevant kernel code?