Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU!hatcher
From: hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Shell 2.06M Vicious bug
Message-ID: <8706231137.AA11478@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 23-Jun-87 07:37:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ingres.8706231137.AA11478
Posted: Tue Jun 23 07:37:14 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jun-87 00:37:57 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 25
Summary: "dir" of diskette w/ bad file dates crashes *hard*

The new shell 2.06M, although very nice in many ways, including correct
expansion of wildcards even when filenames have embedded blanks (I'm
not aware of any other shell that correctly supports this important case),
it does have this one nasty bug.

Say you have a diskette that has files with wierd dates. "list" shows
the dates as Future, shell 2.04M "dir" shows them as negative (e.g.
"-844-Jan-42 00:-31:-41"). Hey, I don't know how they got that way...
but I've got two diskettes of commercial software, and three of public
domain software, that have wierd file dates like this. Anyway, if
you do "dir" or "echo *" in such a diskette, shell2.06M bombs badly.
It gurus 810000005, and destroys the restartable ram disk while it's
at it. Or maybe it just corrupts the free memory list, and AmigaDos
destroys the ram disk before guru-ing. In any case, there really aren't
that many kinds of crashes that screw up the RRD, so this is really 
a bummer.

Interestingly enough, the first sign of the crash is that the disk
grinding (from the directory listing) stops, then the screen flickers,
and finally the guru pops up, and the times that I hit CTRL-A-A
real fast as soon as I saw it going into that sequence, the RRD survives,
whereas the RRD *always* dies if I let it go all the way to the guru
message. First time I've felt I had any important measure of control
*during* a crash! :-)
	Doug