Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!rex!ames!uhccux!virtue!cantva!phys169
From: PHYS169@canterbury.ac.nz (Mark Aitchison, U of Canty; Physics)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 'link'ing a la U*IX in DOS
Message-ID: <8156@canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: 7 Jun 90 10:36:01 GMT
References: <1990Jun1.193543.13903@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1990Jun3.054243.11711@druid.uucp> <8153@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <1990Jun4.025220.2149@druid.uucp>
Lines: 28

In article <8153@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> dixon@sagittarius.crd.ge.com (walt dixon) writes:
>In article 1990Jun3.054243.11711@druid.uucp D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid) 
>writes:
>>In article <1990Jun1.193543.13903@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
>>umhudso7@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Wayne Hudson) writes:
>>>What I'm looking for is something that will let me make symbolic links,
>>>like U*IX.
>>You can't do it with DOS.  Get a Unix system.
>This statement isn't strictly true.  The directory entry for a file
>contains the starting cluster on disk.  One could create a second
>directory entry and insert the appropriate starting cluster.

There are 3 ways to do this, one is to let two directory entries point to the
same cluster, as suggested.  I have done this and, yes, ChkDsk gets upset (and
you have to be careful not to delete the files). But there are two other ways,
with less worries.  The JOIN command is "pure legal DOS" and does close to what
the original post requested (i.e. let space on another drive be used as a
directory on an already-crowded disk). But you have to join the whole disk, not
just a single directory. The first method only applies to files on the same
disk (which is good if you need to make font directories, for example,
accessible as different names for stupid hard-coded software). It would be nice
to have a method that combines the good features of both methods.  Such a third
method is theoretically possible, by intercepting DOS calls (it doesn't have to
capture int 21h, there are a few hooks that network software & JOIN itself use,
but I haven't gone into this thoroughly). Does anyone know of something like
this already? Anyone interested in such a thing if I went ahead and wrote one??

Mark Aitchison.