Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!usc!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!tybalt.caltech.edu!toddpw From: toddpw@tybalt.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Logical file linking? Message-ID: <1990Jun13.060715.3520@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> Date: 13 Jun 90 06:07:15 GMT References: <1990Jun1.190541.2119@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> <13041@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1990Jun4.014522.1843@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> <318@iczer-1.UUCP> <13009@unix.SRI.COM> Sender: news@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 31 animal@unix.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson) writes: >You'd need to stuff a link counter in the file header someplace. Trouble >is, there isn't much space. The only entries that you could bump would >be the version or minimum-version fields. I think one of those is used >to indicate upper/lowercase in the filename. Both are used (you need 15 bits, one for each character). ProDOS should never have had upper-case only filenames in the first place, and when they wanted to add them they should have used version and min_version for what they were originally designed for, to indicate extra fields in the file entry. Prodos directories have fields for specifying the length and count of entries in each block and Apple is being stupid by hacking their spec and destroying the elegance it originally had. >But the big problem, even if you do find space to stuff the link counter, >is that you'd have to patch prodos and the prodos fst. This means you've >got to decompile it, since Apple doesn't distribute source code, or entry >points for this type of thing. Adding new fields to the entry can be done, but EVERY entry must be so extended because each directory header tells you how long each directory entry is and how many of them there are in each block. >I can't see any reason why such a mechanism couldn't be implimented, though.. I agree. Apple, however, has screwed up Prodos enough already, and I wonder who the hell they have maintaining prodos these days. Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu