[SOLVED] What is double dot(..) and single dot(.)?

Issue

The ls -ai command shows that . and .. have their inodes the same as the current directory and parent directory, respectively.

What exactly are . and ..?

Are they real files or even hard links? But as I have known, it's not allowed to create a hard link to a directory.

Solution

They are special name-inode maps which do count as hard-links (they do increase the link-count) though they aren't really hard-links, since, as you said, directories can't have hard-links. Read more here: Hard links and Unix file system nodes (inodes)

Answered By - e.dan

Answer Checked By - Robin (WPSolving Admin)