DOSFS_ToFCBFormat Bug Fix

[Francois Gouget]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Ove Kaaven wrote:

>
> On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 ccrayne at crayne.org wrote:
>
> > Change Log:
> > files/dos_fs.c
> > ccrayne at crayne.org
> > Fixed bug in DOSFS_ToFCBFormat which caused "*" to parse as "*." instead
> > of as "*.*"
>
> This sounds like intended behaviour. Under real DOS, "*" really means
> "*.". The user must type "*.*" to get all files. (This is the stuff that
> used to confuse DOS users converting to Linux - "*.*" no longer meant all
> files...)

   Strange because if I open a 'dos box' in Win95 or NT4, and I type
'dir *' I get a list of all the files, including those that have an
extension like "autoexec.bat".

   In fact I would rather say that "*.*" in Dos/Windows is equivalent to
"*" in Unix. The reason is that Dos/Windows considers filenames to be
split into two independent parts:
 - the name which was originally restricted to 8 characters
 - the extension which was originally restricted to 3 characters

   And note that one always says 8+3, not 8+1+3. So in Dos/Windows "*.*"
really means "any name and any extension" which really means 'any
complete filename' (i.e. "*" on Unix), rather than Unix's "*.*" which
means 'any filename containing a dot'.

   So the change in DOSFS_ToFCBFormat looks like it is reasonable.


--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
 Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't
                                 -- Eric Jong