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From: zben@ni.umd.edu (Ben Cranston)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Standard File and Working directories...
Summary: Need to make WD to use OpenResFile/OpenRFPerm
Message-ID: <1991Jun27.182325.3166@ni.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Jun 91 18:23:25 GMT
References: <D2150025.iyoxve@brain.UUCP> <1991Jun26.084825.9019@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> <54370@apple.Apple.COM>
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Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
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In article <54370@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes:

> There are only two reasons for creating working directories:
> - If you are launching another application that expects to find its
>   location by making a GetVol call.
> - If you are writing a hack that involves part of the system that
>   still uses working directories. For example, one person was
>   patching StdFile and needed to create WD's. Another person
>   wanted to fake out INIT 31 and needed to create WD's.

Before System 7 it was necessary to create a WD if you wanted to open a
resource file with the resource manager.  Neither the old OpenResFile nor
the newer OpenRFPerm routine takes a directory ID.  Now that System 7 is
here there is an HOpenResFile that is very much like OpenRFPerm with an
added DirID parameter.  I suspect this was added more for orthagonality
and completeness, since the new FSpOpenResFile is clearly the only call
a sane programmer would use (well, maybe that's not true -- if you have
the filename in a separate buffer why copy it into an FSSpec record...).

DE KA3ZDF K