Why does ENOENT mean “No such file or directory”?

问题:

What is "ENT" short for?

The error :

No such file or directory

should just be named by "ENOFILE".

Is there any story or reason?

回答1:

It's an abbreviation of Error NO ENTry (or Error NO ENTity), and can actually be used for more than files/directories.

回答2:

It's simply “No such directory entry”. Since directory entries can be directories or files (or symlinks, or sockets, or pipes, or devices), the name ENOFILE would have been too narrow in its meaning.