public_html vs. www

[EliteRides]

I'm sure this is a noob post/repost. I apologize.

Basically, what is the difference between the two directories? What separate functions to the provide independently? They both appear to contain the same data. When I am setting up paths in scripts I can use either /home/username/public_html or /home/username/www and the scripts appear to work fine, etc.

[the_ancient]

I'm sure this is a noob post/repost. I apologize.

Basically, what is the difference between the two directories? What separate functions to the provide independently? They both appear to contain the same data. When I am setting up paths in scripts I can use either /home/username/public_html or /home/username/www and the scripts appear to work fine, etc.

www is redirected to public_html

[jason]

To elaborate on the_ancient's response, www is a symbolic link to public_html. A symbolic link is basically just an alias to a file or directory with a different path and they can be very useful in a Unix environment. I believe the very old NCSA HTTPd server, on which Apache (the server that JPC uses) is based, used www as its home directory whereas Apache uses public_html. Since some older software still uses www, it is kept around for historical reasons.

As for which one to use, both will work equally well in this environment. public_html is more common these days, though, so if you are a developing software that needs to rely on the web path I'd recommend using public_html, but otherwise use whatever you want. Personally, when I am using an FTP client I tend to click on public_html because it is higher up on the list of directories so I see it first, but when I ma using the SSH command line I use www because it is easier to type.

--Jason