The number of links for a folder doesn't reflect the real status?
A question for ls command.
root@cqcloud script]# ls /var/www/html -la
total 36
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Aug 31 01:12 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 31 01:10 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 26 04:07 cmd
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jul 3 10:07 cn.fnmili.com
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 30 11:42 internal
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 25 02:03 node
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jul 11 01:26 sandbox
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Aug 26 03:45 tpshop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 31 01:12 trash
[root@cqcloud script]# ls /var/www/html/cmd -la
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 26 04:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Aug 31 01:12 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 52 Aug 26 04:07 .htaccess
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 73 Aug 26 04:02 df.php
You can see that the cmd folder has a link count of 2, but it actually has 4 links, including 2 files, . and .. folder. Can anyone explain why?
The link count for a directory is the number of names that directory has (this works just as for regular files).
Your cmd directory has two names:
cmdin its parent directory..in the directory itself.
The /var/www/html directory has nine names:
htmlin its parent directory..in itself...in each of its (seven) subdirectories.
Under normal circumstances, the link count for a directory’s . entry should be 2 plus the number of subdirectories that it contains.
This is also true for the root directory /, even though it does not have a parent directory and therefore ought to have a link count of 1 plus the number of subdirectories.
What it does have is a .. directory, which takes you back to /. So that solves that riddle; it’s /.. that provides the “extra” link to /. This is the only directory whose .. directory is a link back to ..