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[ShuangXi]

I remember seeing people mention abusing these for some reasons, but I don't know what.

When you build all downstairs (or upstairs) does that effectively make a one-way path?

[vanatteveldt]

As far as I understand, you need both an upstair and a downstair on the level below it to get a functioning stairway. So I don't think you can create a one-way stair.

The way I understand it to work is that every tile has a "normal" part and a "floor". Mining takes the normal level away, but leaves the floor in place, while e.g. channeling also removes the floor.

The up-stair occupy the normal part and lead from this tile's floor to the floor above it. The downstairs part opens up the floor. An up/down stair is both parts on the same tile. So, the only way to create a stairway going over multiple floors is to have up/down stairs in the middle.

[0cu]

I don't think you can create a one-way path with stairs.
A stairway basically looks like that:

Downstairs                   ^
Up/Downstairs               |
Up/Downstairs           z-levels
Up/Downstairs               |
Up/Downstairs               |
Upstairs                       V

[AutomataKittay]

It was probably something in older version, I've not seen them do anything in more current version. I know there was a hack of sort with ramps back in 40d to make it one-way that involved abusing pathfinding not working properly then.

Well, or you could just drop things through the down stairs

[wagawaga]

When you designate a downstair, you dig the wall if there's one, then carve the floor into a downstair. This reveals the tile below, but not digs it. This is because you remove the floor, that's why flyers can get through even without an upstairs below.
When you designate an upstair, you carve the wall into an upstair.
When you designate an updownstair, you do both.
That's why you can only designate upstairs and updownstairs in wall tiles, while downstairs can be carved out of bare floors.

When an upstair has a downstair one z-level above, it creates a 'link' creatures can path through.

I think the "abuse" you're talking about is that it takes just one step to go up/down a z-level in flight of stairs, thus making them a very powerful solution when planning your fortress.
You've got to think with stairs.

[Trif]

Wiki

[thiosk]

One can build a chain of downstairs only, trapping your digger at the bottom.  I generally consider this a mistake, and have never tried connecting them to my transportation network, instead opting to dig the dwarf out and then replacing all the mis-designations with the correct thing.

I'm not sure what the POINT of this would be, but I suppose one could in principle use them to create one-way highways.  I don't know if the endless upstairs would work.  But I suppose funneling all your dwarves down on the left and streaming them out on the right could be useful for particularly efficient, planned fortresses.

[knutor]

Use up/down stairs, until ya wanna get fancy.

[i2amroy]

One can build a chain of downstairs only, trapping your digger at the bottom.  I generally consider this a mistake, and have never tried connecting them to my transportation network, instead opting to dig the dwarf out and then replacing all the mis-designations with the correct thing.

I'm not sure what the POINT of this would be, but I suppose one could in principle use them to create one-way highways.  I don't know if the endless upstairs would work.  But I suppose funneling all your dwarves down on the left and streaming them out on the right could be useful for particularly efficient, planned fortresses.

Dwarves won't path down unconnected downward staircases on their own, so it would only move your digger down it once.