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From: jwbirdsa@amc.com (James Birdsall)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ALED goes to the wastebasket here in Iceland
Message-ID: <1991Jun19.160947.11626@amc.com>
Date: 19 Jun 91 16:09:47 GMT
References: <2554@gold.gvg.tek.com> <3274@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <1991Jun19.103013.25421@cc.tut.fi> <1991Jun19.112156.901@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Reply-To: jwbirdsa@europa.amc.com (James Birdsall)
Organization: Applied Microsystems, Redmond, WA
Lines: 16

In article <1991Jun19.112156.901@klaava.Helsinki.FI> wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) writes:
>A word of caution: Don't use the character 229 (e5 in hex, it's a greek
>letter) as the first character of a filename. That character signals to
>DOS that the file has been deleted.

   Actually, I recall that DOS makes provision for this. If handed a
filename beginning with 0xE5, it writes the directory entry using
some other value instead (0x05?). This is mentioned in any book which gives
the internal structure of a directory -- if it isn't, the book is broken. :)
When read, DOS translates the other value back to 0xE5.

-- 
James W. Birdsall   WORK: jwbirdsa@amc.com   {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!jwbirdsa
HOME: {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!picarefy!jwbirdsa OTHER: 71261.1731@compuserve.com
"The OS shouldn't die every time the controller drools on a sector." -- a sysop
=========== "For it is the doom of men that they forget." -- Merlin ===========