Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb.ucdavis.edu!kinmonthprep
From: kinmonthprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: input == output, how do you tell?
Message-ID: <3505@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 89 22:14:12 GMT
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: kinmonthprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 17

What is a "fool proof" way of telling whether a program is writing to
its own input under MSDOS?

Under **IX, oneALMOST  certain way is to compare i-node numbers.  If
they are the same you are feeding on yourself.  Since MSDOS lacks i-node
numbers (at lots of other things), how can you be certain you are not
eating your own output?

File name comparions are NOT particularly good because there are too
many ways to write the same name, even without considering case, such
as

file
.\file
full_path\file

etc.