Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!mephisto!prism!sun13!petcher
From: petcher@sun13.scri.fsu.edu (Don Petcher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: A folder that contains itself
Keywords: directory recursion
Message-ID: <85@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 90 17:39:02 GMT
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University
Lines: 32

Shades of Russell's paradox, I have created a folder that contains itself!

The folder has no name, and when you open it, the desktop just adds 
the character '\' to the path name on the top of the GEM window.  
Otherwise I can't do anything to it at all.  Every time I try to do 
something with it, I get the message "You cannot create or access a 
directory or folder this far down the directory path" (Tos 1.4 version 
of the 40 folder limit??).  I'm willing to sell this curiosity cheap 
to the highest bidder.  

The folder was actually created by Zoo, when unzooing (dezooing?) a 
zoo file containing files with rather unorthodox Unix path names (not 
friendly to TOS).  I have not tried (yet) to repeat the exercise.  
Fortunately the folder is contained in another folder (not itself) 
which I have been able to rename with a disk editor, but otherwise I 
can't do anything with it.  Any ideas how to delete it cleanly?  (I 
know I can reformat or zero the partition, or go in with a disk editor 
and track down the fats, but I prefer not.)  The desktop doesn't 
oblige (producing the above message) and GPshell can't handle it (two 
bombs - apparently the error condition resulting in the above message 
does not return anything that the shell recognizes as an error).  Or 
am I stuck with this little curiosity until my next reformat???


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Don Petcher
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306

Petcher@vsdnp.scri.fsu.edu
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