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From: guido@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Symbolic link under MS-DOS ??!!??
Message-ID: <6293@boring.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 12:39:29 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6293
Posted: Tue Jan 22 12:39:29 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Jan-85 05:25:48 EST
Reply-To: guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 33
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

Much to my surprise, I seem to have created a symbolic link on my MS-DOS
hard disk!  The problem is, since symbolic links are undocumented, I don't
know how to get rid of it.

What actually happened is this: I decided to move some stuff to a lower
directory in the hierarchy, and wanted to create a directory named 'old':
	C> mkdir old
After a second or two, the whole screen turned to dots (the graphic displayed
for ^G, probably), nicely blinking as if I had trapped some alarm.
Shift-break nor Ctrl-Alt-Del would help me out, so I switched the power
off and on.  Back in the directory where I tried to do the mkdir, I found
that there was a directory named 'old'.  Guess my surprise when I found that
it contained some files, and at close inspection had exactly the same lay-out
as my root (\) directory!  Well, after
	C> cd old
	C> cd
	C:\
	C>
I concluded that 'old' was actually the same as root.  I have found no other
strange circumstances, but now I am puzzled by two questions:
	- what happened exactly
	- how to get rid of this directory!
Rmdir of course won't work, because the directory isn't empty.
I haven't got any utilities to tackle the disk.

Note added in proof: the chkdsk program seems to have trouble with my hard
disk -- it sits there reading and working, and never ever outputs a thing.

Any help would be appreciated.  I run an IBM-PC with expansion box with an
IBM 10Mb hard disk drive, and MS-DOS 2.0.

	Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam
	mcvax!guido