Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:30485 comp.misc:6388
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!tention!pay
From: pay@tention.uucp (David Gibbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.misc
Subject: DOS directory access
Keywords: function dos c directory
Message-ID: <33856@tention.uucp>
Date: 23 Jun 89 01:07:01 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 19

I am about to write a program that needs to find all files and directories
on a list of drives.  I have reviewed the DOS function calls and found
"findfirst" and "findnext" will do what I need.  I believe that the OS
(PCDOS or MS-DOS) already reads a full directory at a time into some
memory structure under some "reserved" function call.  This seems logical
since an operator doing a "dir" command will see drive access the first
time, but a second "dir" does not access the drive.  It would greatly
speed up my program if I could access the directory information that
DOS contains, instead of finding each directory entry; one by one.

I do not want to read the FAT, since I might wish to port this program
to unix later.

Does anybody out there know where DOS stores the directory and what
the structure definition for that memory space is OR is there a function
call that does this and which one is it and how do I use it?

		THANX (in advance)
		David Gibbs