MC topdir /.. remove!

aliakc at web.de aliakc at web.de
Wed Jan 22 16:54:27 UTC 2003


I want to reply to Bulia, Nerijus and Dmitry in one Reply to not overhelm the Mailinglist. 
 
@Bulia 
> First of all, I never saw a "." entry in mc. I don't think it exists. So you cannot use 
> this for refreshing your directory view even if you want to. 
 
First of all a filemanager should be a mirror of what the real filesystem gives you. My opinion. If 
you grab a good book describing how a filesystem is build up and what these '.' thingies mean 
then you understand it and that's the point what I was trying to explain. Normally a dir has '.' for 
refresh, '..' for going back one dir and the root dir only has '.' for refresh. That was the intention 
behind the .. in MC as well but got changed over time iirc. So usually to have MC act as a mirror 
of your Filesystem it has to support all these dots too. I agree that the .. (dotdot) in the root dir 
was a bit wrong choosen name and having it say 'UP ONE DIR' was wrong too but iirc it was 
change that way over the time but I'm not 100% sure. 
 
Could we please arrange this way that every dir has 
.    <-- dot for refresh 
..   <-- to go back one dir 
 
and the root dir has only the 
.    <-- refresh ? 
 
Now MC has the '.' removed and uses the '..' for going back one dir only and I got used to it over 
the years but the '..' in the root dir should become a '.' only and do a refresh of that dir ? Maybe 
optionally in a prefs ? That's all I was asking for and I really appreciate if we all could agree on it 
without getting deeper into it. If you like me to explain more in detail what's so special about 
these dots then I must refer you to some books describing these things in detail. It will clear 
much up. 
 
> Second, ".." can be used for refresh ONLY in the root dir. In all other cases you 
> just go to parent dir (and have to go back). I think it's a rather strange way to 
> do refresh. 
 
Yeah, different people and different ways to do the task. 
 
@Bulia, Nerijus and Dmitry 
 
> Third, why not just press ctrl-r. Works in any place, and you don't need to move cursor 
> anywhere or go to any other dir. More importantly, the ctrl-r feature was DESIGNED to 
> do refresh. Why not use proper tools for each task? 
 
Thats only a suggestion in how to do it differently but not the solution and answer to the open 
problem of the '.' dot thingies. I simply got used as righthand person to press ScreenUP and 
RETURN its faster and less of a distance for me to press these keys. 
 
@Bulia 
> And finally, ".." does not mean "refresh". It means "go to parent". 
 
I know this and I sad that this was 'wrong' in MC but the function of it was correct. The '..' 
should have been a '.' and the '.' has to be present in all dirs and if I'm not mistaken then it used 
to be that way until someone messed around in it and changed it that way. I may be wrong too 
so please forgive. 
 
> I think that this can be made optional, but only if someone gives a more convincing reason 
> for the existence of ".." in root. 
 
Yes please make it optional or even better fix that one correctly since a filemanager mirros the 
reality of a filesystem so normally all the dots should be visible in all dirs as I tried above but 
someone seem to have removed them long time ago because he got bothered with the 
accidental hit on the '.' which does a refresh. So the 'dot' got removed and the 'dotdot' remained 
thats why the rootdir got the 'dotdot' instead of the 'dot'. Function was correct 'dot' was 
incorrect. 
 
I also tend to quickly press screenup, return a couple of times to get back into the root dir and 
stay there but now I sometimes press one or two times to much and land into subdirs again. 
 
Someone dunno who it was replied that I make some mistakes when I constantly delete stuff in 
rootdir... It was just an example nothing else. 
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