title: A confusion in APUE2(about symbolic link in UNIX)
body: <p>The original text is below.It is in Section 4.22</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The program in Figure 4.24 changes to a specific directory and then calls <code>getcwd</code> to print the working directory. If we run the program, we get </p>
  
  <pre><code>$ ./a.out
  cwd = /var/spool/uucppublic
  $ ls -l /usr/spool
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root 12 Jan 31 07:57 /usr/spool -&gt; ../var/spool
  </code></pre>
    
    <p>Note that chdir follows the symbolic link as we expect it to, from Figure 4.17 .but when it goes up the directory tree, getcwd has no idea when it hits the /var/spool directory that it is pointed to by the symbolic link /usr/spool. This is a characteristic of symbolic links. </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What does the author really mean by saying that the program hits the <code>/var/spool</code>?
  What is the characteristic of symbolic links pointed out by the author?
  I did not really understand.</p>