ccc_ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (05/03/90)
The Standard File package opens these entities called "working directories" whenever the user specifies a file within a folder on an HFS volume. When a folder is open as a working directory, the Finder won't let you delete it--says it's busy. Currently, working directories only seem to be closed when the application exits. This is particularly annoying under MultiFinder. Scenario: I've just FTP'd whole mess of stuff onto our VAXcluster, and now I'm transferring it onto my Mac where I UnStuff and UnBinHex it, and save it away on floppies. So I've got NCSA Telnet and StuffIt both running. Down comes a StuffIt archive with a bunch of files in it, so I switch to the Finder and create a folder to put them in. Back to StuffIt, click Extract, select that folder, and do a save all. Next I copy the folder onto a floppy, and try to delete it off my hard disk. The files disappear OK, but the folder stubbornly remains. Going into StuffIt and changing the Standard File context to a different folder doesn't help--once a working directory is open, it seems to stay open until I quit StuffIt. What a nuisance! Is this a known problem, or am I doing something wrong? Seems to me Standard File is calling OpenWD, but never CloseWD. If the problem is to avoid closing a WD that's in use by another process, surely you solve that by maintaining counts of the number of people who have a WD open, and do the *real* close when the count goes to zero. Lawrence D'Oliveiro Computer Services Dept fone: +64-71-562-889 University of Waikato fax: +64-71-384-066 Hamilton, New Zealand electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Disjoint sets of the world unite!