Your point is well taken. I did not mean to imply that this is bad design decision on the part of Unix. I was also trying to articulate why the current behavior makes sense by describing the mechanics of inodes. However in my experience many novice developers, especially those with limited knowledge of Unix, find this behavior quite surprising. Delving into this curiosity presents a good jumping off point for finding out more about Unix file systems (and, yes, this is all the more reason including references). The HN audience surely includes many people, such as yourself, that consider this to be completely common knowledge but the fact that at least 9 people found the article useful indicates otherwise.