n2ic@druxm.UUCP (05/22/84)
One of the recent articles mentioned that save with replace "@:" trashes files. I have never seen this mentioned on the net. Can anyone fill me in ????? I use @: very often, and have seen trashed files at times that I couldn't explain. Steve London druxm!n2ic
mab@druky.UUCP (05/22/84)
Never, never, never use the '@:' save with replace command! It worked fine for me for about a month. Then all of a sudden, I had several directory entries pointing at the same block on disk, and I had lost a large file (I spent a day poking around the disk trying to recover the lost file, but to no avail). I now tediously rename the old file before saving the new one. This has the advantage of keeping several backup copies of the file until I get around to deleting the old ones. It's a shame Commodore still documents this command, but of course I've never seen any good documentation from Commodore. Alan Bland, ihnp4!druky!mab AT&T-ISL, Denver
joels@tektronix.UUCP (Joel Swank) (05/30/84)
I investigated the problem with @: saves extensively when I first encountered it. I found that the problem never occurs the first time a directory entry is reused (that's essentially what @: does, re-use the directory entry for a new file). So it's safe to do it once. It happens frequently the second time an entry is re-used. The probability is very high that it will happen on the third @:. The problem is independent of the file type. There are 3 solutions to the problem: Don't use @: ; Use it only once on each directory entry; validate the disk after each @:. Joel Swank Tektronix, Beaverton OR