Re: Defragging a directory?

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <55u63m$26a@news.emi.com>, Edhel Iaur <drsmooth@relex.com> wrote:
>dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:
>>Assuming you are referring to the blocks occupied by the directory
>>itself, it is not possible (given a clean disk under ProDOS-8) to create
>>a multi-block subdirectory which is not fragmented, short of a rather
>>convoluted series of create and delete operations.

>I even tried to do something similar to the following in BASIC, to no
>avail:
>CREATE A,TDIR
>BLOAD B,A$2000,TDIR
>BSAVE A,TDIR,A$2000,L[whatEverTheHeckItWas]

>And, of course, whenever I tried to do something about it with Copy
>][+, it totally didn't understand what I wanted to do.

   That kind of operation is severely not recommended. Directory files
have an internal structure. Randomly changing the size is not
recommended.  Another thing is that the first 'entry' in a directory
is a duplicate copy of the directory's name-- even if the CREATE
put in the right name, you blasted it over, which Copy ][+ got confused
at.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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