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From: ins778u@vax4.cc.monash.edu.au (mr  c.r. hames)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: DirWork 1.12
Message-ID: <6036@monu1.cc.monash.oz>
Date: 24 Nov 90 14:13:29 GMT
Sender: news@monu1.cc.monash.oz
Organization: Monash Uni, Clayton, Vic 3168, Australia
Lines: 31


    An article was posted some time ago stating not to use DirWork 1.12
with the use of it causing the loss of data for a person.  Thanks to
him I have worked out what happened and as some people asked here is
the situation.......

    The problem occurs with all other directory utilities I have tested,
it is caused by a DOS bug.  When a move operation is done on the same
device most intelligent programs do a rename so it happens very quickly.
So if you have a device with a dir ONE and another ONE/TWO and you do
the wierd operation of move ONE to ONE/TWO the program does

 rename ONE ONE/TWO/ONE

DOS returns no error even though it stuffs up completely and the ONE
directory disappears so you lose all files/dirs that are decendants of
it.  You can do it from DOS or from most if not all dir utilities.

I have not checked the situation with DOS 2.0 but doubt very much that
this bug remains in 2.0.


So DirWork 1.12 is not a Hard Disk muncher or anything of the sort as
might have been decided from the original article.  It is just unaware
(as are sid 1.06 etc) of this DOS bug.  A check for this very rare
situation will be included in the next version of course.
--
Chris Hames - C/Assembler programmer | Fish: DirWork,FSDirs,VMK..|  /~\/ \
              3:633/353  (Fido)      | Commercial:  Soon...      | (  OZ  )
mail ins778u@vax4.cc.monash.edu.au   +---------------------------+ `--'\_/
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