[comp.os.os9] rename 'feature'

rh2y+@andrew.cmu.edu (Russell E. Hoffman, II) (05/08/91)

I was just toying around tonight and stumbled across an interesting
'feature' of rename under OSK. Try the following on a ramdisk
or floppy you dont care about:

$ rename .. foo

$ rename . foobar

This produces precisely the expected results. The unfortunate consequence
is that you no longer have access to your working directory, as most
programs look for '.' as the working directory. Chd foo will indeed
take you up one directory level tho.

Funny thing, though. Rename won't allow you to change this back; you have
to use a sector editor of some sort and manually do it.
I just thought some of you might find this interesting.

Cheers,

Russell Hoffman
rh2y+@andrew.cmu.edu
Carnegie Mellon University

bdw@mondas.UUCP (05/12/91)

>I was just toying around tonight and stumbled across an interesting
>'feature' of rename under OSK. Try the following on a ramdisk
>or floppy you dont care about:
>
>$ rename .. foo
>
>$ rename . foobar
>
>This produces precisely the expected results. The unfortunate consequence
>is that you no longer have access to your working directory, as most
>programs look for '.' as the working directory. Chd foo will indeed
>take you up one directory level tho.
>
>Funny thing, though. Rename won't allow you to change this back; you have
>to use a sector editor of some sort and manually do it.
>I just thought some of you might find this interesting.

     Yeah, I >>do<< find it interesting!  The moral of the story seems to be,
be VERY careful when typing out a sequence for the RENAME command, otherwise
you'll trash a disk.  Mayhaps a fix is in order, eh? :)

>Cheers,
>
>Russell Hoffman
>rh2y+@andrew.cmu.edu
>Carnegie Mellon University

Cheers^2,