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From: yawei@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (mr. yawei)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: How does del *.* work?
Keywords: del *.*
Message-ID: <1991Jan8.191227.14028@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 91 19:12:27 GMT
References: <1991Jan8.123410.1564@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 15

In article <1991Jan8.123410.1564@en.ecn.purdue.edu> lroberts@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Larry S Roberts) writes:
>I have written a program that uses the findfirst, findnext, and remove library
>functions to delete files from a directory, however, I have noticed that the
>dos command "del *.*" works almost instantly when compared to my program.  My
>program has to access every file and it seems like the dos command only makes
>one disk access.  Also the remove function will not take wild cards, so this is
>not an option.
>
>How does del *.* work, and how can I incorporate this in my software?  Thanks.

I think 'del *.*' works via DOS function 13h (or 0x13, if you
preferred), the 'delete with FCB' function, with the filename
field set to '????????.???'.

yawei