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From: ron@brl-sem.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Confused file name in directory
Message-ID: <651@brl-sem.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Feb-87 22:39:27 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-sem.651
Posted: Wed Feb 25 22:39:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Feb-87 01:46:19 EST
References: <105@aob.UUCP> <563@aw.sei.cmu.edu.sei.cmu.edu> <2136@ptsfa.UUCP>
Organization: Electronic Brain Research Lab
Lines: 20
Xref: utgpu comp.unix.questions:1188 comp.unix.wizards:1133 comp.unix.xenix:118

In article <2136@ptsfa.UUCP>, ssl@ptsfa.UUCP (Sam Lok) writes:
> But as a last to the last resort, if you don't really want to get rid
> of things, I'll try this before 'clri':
> 	1. make sure there's only one directory and/or filename start
> 	   with D
> 	2. then 'mv D* goodname'

THIS WILL NOT WORK.

The problem is that the UNIX directory structure is exactly 14 characters
long and some older versions of UNIX (version 7 which XENIX is based on,
don't know if System V has the same problem) compare all the 14 characters
to do a match.  They expect all the unused characters to have nulls in them
rather than be null terminated.  There is NOTHING you can do through the
UNIX file system that will reference this file.  Think about it.  D*
would just expand to "D".  Mv knows nothing special about "*", that is
expanded by the  shell and passed as an argument to mv.  You still can't
pass that to unlink or open because the null terminates the string.

-Ron