Sadly, this is a problem with the structure of the FAT12/16 format. The way the FAT (file allocation table) uses pointers to clusters allows for multiple 'links' to files or folders, including the root. This is an unsupported feature of the filesystem and can be used to great effect on devices like MP3 players to organize files in many folders, with the data only stored once.
The reason it's unsupported: if you successfully unlink/delete one reference to the file, all references become invalid. Microsoft calls this 'cross-linked files' and the problem is most easily repaired using ScanDisk. There is no current way to solve this on the Palm directly. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jan Slodicka Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 6:05 AM To: Palm Developer Forum Subject: VFS driver bug? Hello I just made another strange experience with the card. Somehow we manage to produce a root level directory ("/xx/") that acted as a link to the card root ("/"). When browsing, the directory showed the identical files/subdirs as the root - among them also itself. A clear recursion and all programs (file managers) that we tested failed here once they had to do a recursive scan - they mostly crashed when the memory was excerpted. The directory could not be deleted by VFSFileDelete (vfsErrDirNotEmpty) and VFSFileGetAttributes returned a single attribute - vfsFileAttrDirectory. I was about to reformat the card, when I decided to try PocketPC. Here the directory was shown as empty, could be copied and deleted. However, the copied directory is furtheron unreadable under Palm, but at least the recursion disappeared. Does anybody have any idea how to cope with such situation? (I mean on Palm.) With best regards, Jan Slodicka -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/ -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
