Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtuxo!mtgzz!drutx!druhi!dlm
From: dlm@druhi.ATT.COM (Dan Moore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Fsfirst/next and lineA question
Message-ID: <3509@druhi.ATT.COM>
Date: 1 Sep 88 16:12:06 GMT
References: <1143@atari.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO
Lines: 30

in article <1143@atari.UUCP>, apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) says:
> 
> Fsfirst/Fsnext has NEVER been the culprit in the 40-folder bug.  GEMDOS
> has NEVER had a concept of folders which are "in use" versus folders
> which are not.  It allocated internal memory for a folder as soon as it
> came across it: getting a directory listing of a directory with
> subdirectories caused memory to be allocated for those subdirectories.
> This memory was NEVER released or reused.
>
> ... 
>
> ============================================
> Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
> reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt

	Fsfirst/Fsnext have always been a big problem with the 40 folder
limit.  Since the DTA contains a pointer to a directory node, a node is
"used" while in a Fsfirst/Fsnext loop.  Those programs that didn't call
Fsnext till a failure caused a LOT of nodes to be lost (even more than
"normal").  Some early versions of GDOS had this problem, they could
cause 20 to 300-400 nodes to be used while the ST was booting (the
numbers varied based on the files/folders on the boot drive). 
Apparently they did a Fsfirst to get file size information which tied up
a directory node entry forever.


					Dan Moore
					AT&T Bell Labs
					Denver
					dlm@druhi.ATT.COM