Recursive directories

[Mariane]

I was trying to install some Perl libraries, and the
directories were created recursively. I mean,
supposing A, B and C are directory names, I ended
up with a path

./A/B/C/A/B/C/A/B/C/A/B/C/A/B/C/A/B/C/A/B/C etc etc etc

Which slowed down my machine and made it impossible
to backup.

Is there a way to prevent that, please?

Mariane

[drakebasher]

Are they all actual directories, or are at least some of them symbolic links?

[Mariane]

As far as I know, anyway, when I saw the thing scrolling endlessly
I got scared and deleted it immediately.

Mariane

[kkubasik]

What directory were you installing this into? And can you give us a more precise history of while files you downloaded and ran, and in what order?

[Mariane]

I just needed an HTML to LaTeX script. I've got one now
the gnu one, works fine.

I don't remember file names, I just tried some automatic s/w
which was supposed to download the libraries I needed... I just
remember that some directories were named by single upper
case letters, that refered to the first letter of the name of the
person who wrote the library. The subdirectories of this were
the author names.

Then it became a case of "in order to install this you need to
have that first, etc etc etc".

Then it was using, of all things, Makefile (in Perl!!!)
So of course it didn't work.

Anyway, I won't try that particular thing again (I should
think not!), I was asking in general, is there a way to prevent
that, for example setting an absolute limit to the number
of levels you can have in directories?

I mean sub-sub-sub are allowed but not sub-sub-sub-sub?

Mariane