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From: bjornb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn H Bjornsson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: (abort,retry...) *IGNORE* (?)
Summary: How does Ignore work?
Keywords: ignore ceh babel_fish
Message-ID: <1117@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 8 Sep 89 23:33:20 GMT
Reply-To: bjornb@rhi.hi.is (Bjorn H Bjornsson)
Organization: University of Iceland (RHI)
Lines: 37

There was some talk on comp.virus about the Abort,Retry,Ignore message
recently.
Which in turn got me wondering (again) about the IGNORE part.

I've often been in the situation where I find myself trying to write
to a write protected hard disk.  No way to back out, I usually
punched 'A', losing tons of work.  Later I found out about the Ignore, which 
has since saved my data a lot of times.
For a certain program you'd have to punch 'I' 4-6 times to regain control of
the program.  For another programs less.  For yet other programs, Ignore didn't
help at all.

Does anyone know what Ignore does exactly?  If it does what the name implies,
i.e. skips (?) a write e.g., then I'm not sure how the program can proceed.
Actually I haven't got any idea on what level the skip (?) takes place,
in some low level bios routine, or some higher level.

Do you get an error code after a certain number of Ignores?
Would you have to use dos functions to generate the error and retrieve 
the error code?
What I'd most like to know is whether there is some way to program an
ordinary hi-level OPEN or WRITE (or their equivalents in C or Pascal) in an 
ordinary hi-level language, so that Ignore will more or less automatically
let the program regain control.

Am I getting it all wrong?  Have I just witnessed Critical Error Handlers
in action?  CEH's wouldn't fall into the category "more or less automatically",
so I'm not looking for the description of one.
Anyway, the fact that one has to punch 'I' repeatedly, I find very unCEH-like,
so I don't think it's a CEH after all.  But what do I know anyway?  =)

I'd greatly appreciate info that'd shed any light on the subject.

Bjossi "einn forvitinn" Bjorns.
-- 
Bjorn Heimir Bjornsson		Internet:  bjornb@rhi.hi.is
University of Iceland		UUCP:	   {mcvax,enea}!hafro!rhi!bjornb