MHJohnson@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark Johnson) (12/21/85)
I have been having a problem with rooted directories that I should let you know about. The command sequence: $ SET DEFAULT XXX:[000000] $ CREATE/DIR [.MYDIR] does not create the directory XXX:[MYDIR]! It creates two directories, the first is XXX:[000000] & the second is XXX:[000000.MYDIR]. I believe there is a problem with RMS & accessing the (non-existant) file XXX:[000000]000000.DIR. I believe that RMS should be able to detect accesses to that file & give you the file-id and contents of the real root directory (eg. DUA0:[000000]XXX.DIR). I have submitted it to DEC as a problem & their response boils down to "It works the way we designed it, we'll fix the documentation to clarify how it really works". Needless to say, I am a little bit pissed off at DEC. What good are rooted directories if they do not act the same as the true top level directory of a disk? If you feel the same way I do, please let DEC know about it (through DSIN or an SPR) & perhaps this could be fixed in a future release of VMS. --Mark <MHJohnson @ HI-MULTICS>
gwalker@BBN-SPCA.ARPA (Gail Rubin Walker) (12/22/85)
I may have misunderstood something about your complaint. Why don't you just use: create /dir XXX:[MYDIR] instead of (effectively) create /dir XXX:[000000.MYDIR] ??? The former is the way I would create a top level directory whether XXX is a rooted dir or a real disk like DUA0:; I know it works for either. I just tried it on one of our vms 4.2 systems. Given what you are typing, it seems to me that DEC is correct - seems to be doing exactly what I would expect. -- Gail (Rubin) Walker gwalker@bbn-spca
MHJohnson@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark Johnson) (12/25/85)
In reply to AWALKER@RED.RUTGERS.EDU, XXX:[000000] isn't really the same
as DUA0:[000000]. Some of the differences include:
1) There is no directory named XXX:[000000]000000.DIR unless you
create one yourself.
2) Because of (1), there is a big difference between creating
XXX:[.MYDIR] and creating XXX:[MYDIR]. In particular, the first causes
the following structure to be created:
DUA0:[XXX] -- The root directory
DUA0:[XXX.000000] -- Created `automatically' by RMS.
DUA0:[XXX.000000.MYDIR] -- What RMS thought I wanted.
where the second causes what is desired:
DUA0:[XXX]
DUA0:[XXX.MYDIR]
3) If I try to overcome (1) by using SET FILE/ENT to make 000000.DIR
equivalent to DUA0:[000000]XXX.DIR, I get an infinite loop (well, not
really infinite) when I use the command: $ DIR XXX:[*...] because it
goes to XXX:[000000], XXX:[000000.000000], & so on. I consider this to
be a problem w/ wild-card searches since they do trim the directory
search if you do something like $ DIR DUA0:[*...] (which is
accessing a true top-level directory).
I hope this clarifies what I feel is a problem w/ rooted directories. I
want to see rooted directories to work the SAME as a true top-level
directory. DEC's current response is to document these anomalies as
`features'. Putting code into RMS to fix this right does not seem to be
a significant effort (say 50 LOC max?). That level of effort should be
about the same as documenting the anomalies instead!
--Mark <MHJohnson @ HI-MULTICS>