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From: scott@soda.berkeley.edu (Scott Silvey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: BSD filesystem and od utility
Date: 22 Jul 1993 21:51:05 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
Lines: 54
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <22n249$2fv@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

Hello all!

For those of you out there who are familiar with the 'od' 
utility and directory content of a BSD filesystem, I have 
a few questions for you.  Please note that the data below
was produced on a BSD 4.3 machine.

When I use "od -cdw12 ~" I get the following (which is, of
course, not the complete listing)

0000000   \0  \0 016  \0  \0  \f  \0 001   .  \0  \0  \0
           00000   03584   00012   00001   11776   00000
0000014   \0  \0 007  \0  \0  \f  \0 002   .   .  \0  \0
           00000   01792   00012   00002   11822   00000
0000030   \0  \0 016 001  \0 024  \0 013   .   X   r   e
           00000   03585   00020   00011   11864   29285
0000044    s   o   u   r   c   e   s  \0  \0  \0 016 002
           29551   30066   25445   29440   00000   03586
0000060   \0 020  \0 006   .   a   l   i   a   s  \0  \0
           00016   00006   11873   27753   24947   00000
0000074   \0  \0 016 003  \0 020  \0 006   .   c   s   h
           00000   03587   00016   00006   11875   29544
0000110    r   c  \0  \0  \0  \0 016 004  \0 020  \0 004
           29283   00000   00000   03588   00016   00004
0000124    .   e   n   v  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0 016 005
           11877   28278   00000   00000   00000   03589


My questions are as follows: 

1)    [looking at the row starting at offset 0]: what does the '016' 
      entry mean?  This entry is also found as a delimeter in the 
      other file entries as well.  I have also observed that different
      users on a system usually have a different delimeter than
      '016' (I have also seen 'M', 'T', '020', etc...  used).  Why/What
      is this?

      I realize that '3584' is an inode entry and '001' is a file
      length, but what is the '11776' entry in the second row?
 
2)    Why is the data in the second row of each offset put into
      groups of 5 bytes each?  These groupings also appear to have
      a correlation to the data of line 1 of each offset (a form
      feed '\f', is indeed an ascii '012'), but what is it?


Any information would be greatly appreciated. 

                          Thanx in advance,

                                   Jon.

P.S. Please mail replies/clarifications to 'jon@lurnix.com' - I don't 
     get to read news very often and this will insure I get your reply.