OpenEuphoria

Re: DOS undocumented feature

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Jul 21, 2002
• 448 views

Ricardo Forno writes:
> While trying to enhance your DUPFILE.EXW program
> with some additional options, I discovered what seems
> to be an undocumented feature of DOS under
> Windows 98 SE. This happens only in a DOS window,
> not when you restart in DOS mode.
> As you know, . means the current directory, and .. means the parent
> directory. But ... means the parent of the parent directory,
> .... the parent of the parent of the parent, and so on.

That apparently doesn't work on XP. Only . and .. work.

> So, maybe the number of possible platforms should be increased.

I'm not sure what you mean. dupfile.exw works (more or less) on all
platforms. Only "." and ".." are reported by the system calls that dir()
uses. I guess "..." and "...." are supported artificially by the
Win 98 command-line processor.

> Do you know why some files processed by DUPFILE.EXW when run
> through ex raise a "Critical error" condition?

That's what DOS does when a DOS program tries to open a locked file.
Not very helpful. It will help if you close all your Windows apps
before scanning the whole drive with ex dupfile.exw.

Regards,
   Rob Craig
   Rapid Deployment Software
   http://www.RapidEuphoria.com