lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) (06/12/90)
I have a question that may have been asked before but I wasn't listening. I have a Hardframe and a 40 meg quantum, I have arp installed and I use conman, ff, and a few other things running. Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. I have removed it using a dirutil type program and also found it to cause me some grief when I tried to use the arp delete command which treated it as a wild card and proceeded to delete everything. The file has no size and it wouldn't really bother me if I knew where it is comming from. Thanks Lance Holmes
gerber@buzzer.enet.dec.com (Robert M. Gerber) (06/13/90)
> Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. > The file has no size and it wouldn't really bother me if I knew where > it is comming from. > Thanks > Lance Holmes > I have had this problem also, if I remember correctly, it comes from one of the non-commercial games. (Pacman/Spaceinvaders/Asteroids/?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Robert M. Gerber UUCP: ...!decwrl!oldjon.enet!gerber INET: gerber@oldjon.enet.dec.com Any opinions represented here are definetly not those of my employer. Come to think of it, they may not be mine either!
phorgan@cup.portal.com (Patrick John Horgan) (06/14/90)
Wish I could help you, this used to happen to me as well, and when it did the ls that comes with Manx wouldn't list anyfiles! I found that delete ? would get rid of it since the only other 1 character things in my root were directories and they wouldn't delete. If you find out, please email me. Patrick Horgan phorgan@cup.portal.com
" Seaman) (06/15/90)
phorgan@cup.portal.com (Patrick John Horgan) writes:
< Wish I could help you, this used to happen to me as well, and when it
< did the ls that comes with Manx wouldn't list anyfiles! I found that
< delete ? would get rid of it since the only other 1 character things
< in my root were directories and they wouldn't delete.
< If you find out, please email me.
<
< Patrick Horgan phorgan@cup.portal.com
If my memory serves, the '*' file is a byproduct of the player program
from The Director. I recall noticing the problem after I ran the
'Walker II' demo, and was able to repeat it consistently (i.e., run
'ls dh0:', no '*' file, run Walker II demo, run ls again, erase '*' file).
If I remember right, the problem only occurs when running from the
Workbench.
There may be other programs which have this same problem, but The Director
is the one that comes to mind.
--
Chris (Insert phrase here) Seaman | /o -- -- --
cseaman@sequent <or> ||| -- -- - I'm Outta Here, Man!
...!uunet!sequent!cseaman |vvvv/ -- -- -
The Home of the Killer Smiley |___/ -- -- --matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov (matt of ASTD) (06/15/90)
In article <1636@raybed2.msd.ray.com> lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) writes: >Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. >I have removed it using a dirutil type program and also found it >to cause me some grief when I tried to use the arp delete command which >treated it as a wild card and proceeded to delete everything. Aha! So I'm not the only one. At first I thought I had a virus. I tried to 'more *', 'less *', 'type *', 'z *' and I got hang city. Finally I tried 'ced *'. ced didn't hang (probably because it's so great), but it didn't show anything even though my * listed as 51 bytes. I renamed * to junk and 'ced junk' and behold I saw that junk was a message indicating an error because AREXX could not be found. Well, I do use VT1002.9b which does use AREXX. Could this be some error message? Does anyone know for sure? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Presley (UCLA CS Grad. Student) & (JPL CS dude) Internet (presley@cs.ucla.edu) or (matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov) "Twisted yellow puppies play broken flutes loudly..."
bleys@tronsbox.xei.com (Bill Cavanaugh) (06/15/90)
matt of ASTD writes: >Aha! So I'm not the only one. At first I thought I had a virus. >I tried to 'more *', 'less *', 'type *', 'z *' and I got hang city. >Finally I tried 'ced *'. ced didn't hang (probably because it's >so great), but it didn't show anything even though my * listed as >51 bytes. I renamed * to junk and 'ced junk' and behold I saw >that junk was a message indicating an error because AREXX could not >be found. Well, I do use VT1002.9b which does use AREXX. Could >this be some error message? Does anyone know for sure? >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Matthew Presley (UCLA CS Grad. Student) & (JPL CS dude) >Internet (presley@cs.ucla.edu) or (matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov) >"Twisted yellow puppies play broken flutes loudly..." Hmm... If I remember correctly, the regular CLI uses "*" to mean stdin... Early C language books for Ami told people to type "copy * hello.c", and then type the hello.c program, ending with an escape character than means "end of file" to the console. I wonder if somebody out there was using that in their program, and it bugged? /******************************************************************** * All of the above copyright by the below. * * * * Bill Cavanaugh uunet!tronsbox!bleys * * * * "You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever." * * Larry Anderson * ********************************************************************/
barrett@ektools.UUCP (Chris Barrett) (06/15/90)
> In article <1636@raybed2.msd.ray.com> lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) writes: > >Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. > >I have removed it using a dirutil type program and also found it > >to cause me some grief when I tried to use the arp delete command which > >treated it as a wild card and proceeded to delete everything. > I got a file name * from installing and running Falcon, the origional on my harddrive. It created the * filename in the root directory of the partition. Perhaps you did this? Chris -- barrett@kodak.com ( Chris Barrett ) rochester!kodak!ektools!barrett
jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org (John Meissen) (06/15/90)
> In article <1636@raybed2.msd.ray.com> lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) writes: >Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. In case you haven't figured out the obvious, the filename occurs when the program attempts to open the console to print a message, and uses the AmigaDOS-endorsed method of openning "*", which is defined to be the console. Of course, under Workbench there is no console, and so a disk file in the current directory is created with that name instead. -- John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute jmeissen@oacis.org (Internet) | ..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP) | "Go Blazers!!" jmeissen (BIX) |
matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov (matt of ASTD) (06/16/90)
In article <533@oregon.oacis.org> jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org (John Meissen) writes: >In case you haven't figured out the obvious, the filename occurs when the program >attempts to open the console to print a message, and uses the AmigaDOS-endorsed >method of openning "*", which is defined to be the console. Of course, under >Workbench there is no console, and so a disk file in the current directory >is created with that name instead. I thank you for making this point clear, but it is far from obvious what is happening. It is kind of you to take the time to explain what is happening, but by saying "In case you haven't figured out the obvious" it sounds like you are insulting anyone who may have not known what the problem was. I believe that no question on this group should be thought of as stupid or obvious. No one should be made to feel bad because of a question they asked. So, once again thanks for the info, but it the future could you leave out statements that demean other members of this group. P.S. Sorry about the Blazers. I hate Detroit (I'm from LA). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Presley (UCLA CS Grad. Student) & (JPL CS dude) Internet (presley@cs.ucla.edu) or (matt@sapphire.jpl.nasa.gov) "Twisted yellow puppies play broken flutes loudly..."
jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org (John Meissen) (06/16/90)
In article <4077@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> matt@sapphire.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (matt of ASTD) writes: >I thank you for making this point clear, but it is far from obvious >what is happening. It is kind of you to take the time to explain I humbly apologize for the inconsiderate tone of my statement. I spent 4 or 5 years supporting Amiga programmers, and sometimes tend to forget that might be an obvious point that was overlooked or forgotten may also be totally unknown to others. Most of the Amiga community doesn't program, and quite a lot use the CLI as little as posible. No sarcasm was intended. -- John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute jmeissen@oacis.org (Internet) | "That's the remarkable thing about life; ..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP) | things are never so bad that they can't jmeissen (BIX) | get worse." - Calvin & Hobbes
peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (06/16/90)
CON: uses * to indicate the current window. It sounds like the programs in question are passing the file name "*" to the wrong device. Check on redirects in scripts. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.
ben@servalan.uucp (Ben Mesander) (06/17/90)
In article <533@oregon.oacis.org> jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org (John Meissen) writes: >> In article <1636@raybed2.msd.ray.com> lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) writes: > >Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. > > >In case you haven't figured out the obvious, the filename occurs when the program >attempts to open the console to print a message, and uses the AmigaDOS-endorsed >method of openning "*", which is defined to be the console. Of course, under >Workbench there is no console, and so a disk file in the current directory >is created with that name instead. >-- >John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute >jmeissen@oacis.org (Internet) | >..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP) | "Go Blazers!!" >jmeissen (BIX) | It can also happen when a program that opens a window with file name '*' when you have redirected its output to NIL:. I ran into this problem with AMXLISP. Even though I have never seen it direct any output to the window that started it, when I put 'amxlisp >nil:' in an ICONX script, it would create file '*' in the root directory of my hard drive. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that NIL: is not a 'real' amigados device. I ran across it with a script I attached to an icon that ran emacs, amxlisp, and started a cli, and then exited. ben@servalan.UUCP
BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz (06/17/90)
In article <36805@sequent.UUCP>, cseaman@sequent.UUCP (Chris "I'm Outta Here, Man!" Seaman) writes: > phorgan@cup.portal.com (Patrick John Horgan) writes: > < Wish I could help you, this used to happen to me as well, and when it > < did the ls that comes with Manx wouldn't list anyfiles! I found that > < delete ? would get rid of it since the only other 1 character things > < in my root were directories and they wouldn't delete. > < If you find out, please email me. > < > < Patrick Horgan phorgan@cup.portal.com > > If my memory serves, the '*' file is a byproduct of the player program > from The Director. I recall noticing the problem after I ran the > 'Walker II' demo, and was able to repeat it consistently (i.e., run > 'ls dh0:', no '*' file, run Walker II demo, run ls again, erase '*' file). > If I remember right, the problem only occurs when running from the > Workbench. > > There may be other programs which have this same problem, but The Director > is the one that comes to mind. > > -- > Chris (Insert phrase here) Seaman | /o -- -- -- > cseaman@sequent <or> ||| -- -- - I'm Outta Here, Man! > ...!uunet!sequent!cseaman |vvvv/ -- -- - > The Home of the Killer Smiley |___/ -- -- -- My understanding is that it is a temporary file written when a batch file is executed when a T: directory has not been assigned or exist on the boot disk root directory. I think you'll find the * file always appears in the root directory of your boot disk. Regards Alan
jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org ( Staff OACIS) (07/10/90)
In article <1636@raybed2.msd.ray.com> lah@raybed2.msd.ray.com (LANCE HOLMES) writes: >Does anyone know what is generating a file named *. Most likely it is created by a program run from the Workbench, probably a game. A CLI-based program can open a file-handle to the console by specifying a file name "*". However, under Workbench there is no console, and it probably results in a file by that name being created in the current directory. Probably whatever is doing it is trying to print a message on the console. Next time try typing the contents before deleting it. -- John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute jmeissen@oacis.org (Internet) | "That's the remarkable thing about life; ..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP) | things are never so bad that they can't jmeissen (BIX) | get worse." - Calvin & Hobbes