Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!attcan!lsuc!ncrcan!brambo!sid
From: sid@brambo.UUCP (Sid Van den Heede)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: An MS-DOS Fright
Message-ID: <556@brambo.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 89 21:01:45 GMT
References: <5826@homxc.ATT.COM> <976@necis.UUCP>
Reply-To: sid@brambo.UUCP (Sid Van den Heede)
Organization: Bramalea Software Inc., Bramalea, Ont.
Lines: 49

In article <976@necis.UUCP> rbono@necis.UUCP (Rich Bono) writes:
>In article <5826@homxc.ATT.COM>, gauss@homxc.ATT.COM (E.GAUSS) writes:
>> 
>> While this may be documented somewhere, I have not seen it.  If your
>> finger strays to the next key and you type
>> 
>>                del  */wrk
>> 
>> instead of
>> 
>>                del  *.wrk
>> 
>> MS-DOS apparently deletes all files except those with an extension of .wrk!
>
>	I tried this in MS-DOS 3.30 and MS-DOS 4.01 and this action
>responds with an error message in both cases... NO FILES WERE DELETED
>in either case.
>
>	Do you have some sort of TSR loaded? Or some other "DOS enhancer"?
>
>Or what version of DOS are you using?

No magic here!  (or is that :-)?)

First, the "/wrk" is a command line option (ie, switch) that the command
can choose to use or ignore or whatever.

So, you simply told del to delete all files that match the wildcard "*",
that is, all files with *no* extension.  Your command would also not
delete files with an extension of .wak, or .nfg, or ...  You might as
well have typed "del *".

Forget TSRs and DOS enhancers...The only thing that is relevant here
is the revision of DOS.  I tried this on three versions, and got three
different results (:-) again?).

The del command with DOS 2.11 didn't care about the switch(es) "/wrk"...
It just deleted everything that matched the wildcard.

The del with DOS 3.30 complained with "Invalid parameter"...Glad I didn't
give it a complex command line...Which parameter?

Well, it seems Microsoft improved things with 4.0.  That version said
"Invalid switch - /wrk" (thank you!).

Sorry for the long response...First, I have a version of software that
won't let me post if the included text is more than new stuff :-).  Second,
I thought a lecture on switches might be appropriate, since at least a
couple of people have forgotten this fundamental MS-DOS feature.