Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz!virtue!ccc_ldo
From: ccc_ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Ref counts on WDs? (folder deletion nuisance)
Message-ID: <401.26406b26@waikato.ac.nz>
Date: 3 May 90 05:32:22 GMT
Lines: 34

The Standard File package opens these entities called "working
directories" whenever the user specifies a file within a
folder on an HFS volume. When a folder is open as a working
directory, the Finder won't let you delete it--says it's busy.

Currently, working directories only seem to be closed when
the application exits. This is particularly annoying under
MultiFinder.

Scenario: I've just FTP'd whole mess of stuff onto our VAXcluster,
and now I'm transferring it onto my Mac where I UnStuff and UnBinHex
it, and save it away on floppies. So I've got NCSA Telnet and StuffIt
both running. Down comes a StuffIt archive with a bunch of files in
it, so I switch to the Finder and create a folder to put them in.
Back to StuffIt, click Extract, select that folder, and do a save all.

Next I copy the folder onto a floppy, and try to delete it off
my hard disk. The files disappear OK, but the folder stubbornly
remains. Going into StuffIt and changing the Standard File context
to a different folder doesn't help--once a working directory is
open, it seems to stay open until I quit StuffIt. What a nuisance!

Is this a known problem, or am I doing something wrong? Seems to
me Standard File is calling OpenWD, but never CloseWD. If the
problem is to avoid closing a WD that's in use by another process,
surely you solve that by maintaining counts of the number of
people who have a WD open, and do the *real* close when the count
goes to zero.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Computer Services Dept                    fone: +64-71-562-889
University of Waikato                      fax: +64-71-384-066
Hamilton, New Zealand            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
Disjoint sets of the world unite!