rcr@picuxa.UUCP (Richard Court ) (04/23/88)
I am writing a program to remove all traces of a file from a disk. Everything is in place except for the following: I would like to null out the entire filename from the FAT instead of just the first character. Can anyone give me any insights as to how to go about doing this? I thank anyone in advance who can set me off in the write direction.
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (04/24/88)
In article <554@picuxa.UUCP> rcr@picuxa.UUCP (Richard Court ) writes: >I would like to null out the entire filename from the FAT instead of just the >first character. I suspect you will get lots of replies telling you how to access the file allocation table directly. Don't. Too many programmers hastily do low-level nonportable stuff, and aren't around a year or two later when the software breaks and the frustrated user has to switch to a new product. I suggest the following portable approach. Reserve a funny single-character filename for your own use. Suppose it is "@". To remove the filename of your target file from the file allocation table, you: (a) delete any file called "@" if it exists (b) rename the file you are zapping to "@" (c) delete the new file "@" MS-DOS system calls exist to delete and rename files. Please double-check to make sure that the above does completely eradicate the filename from disk. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi