What does dot and dotdot means

Question

What is the meaning of dot and dotdot when listing folders using QDir::entryList?
It is not really obvious to me.

Answer 1

. means "current directory" and .. means "parent directory".

For example, if your directory is C:\\Users\\Bob , . refers to C:\\Users\\Bob and .. refers to C:\\Users .

You will find that this is universal in programming and computers in general.

If you don't want your list to contain these special directories, you can include QDir::NoDotAndDotDot in your filter.

Answer 2

Dot means the folder currently set for QDir, dotdot refers to the parent folder. You often do not want ro list those in your algorithms, so it is possible to request entryList not to return those.