So saith Ben A L Jemmett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>BTW, I read somewhere that when DOS deletes a file it changes the first
letter
>to a question mark. However, when it stores it in a directory it uses some
>symbol or other, and changes this symbol into a question mark. when it reads
>the directory it does it the other way around. WHY?
The first character is changed to E5h. Many undelete utilities will *display*
this character as a question mark to indicate that the original character is
unknown. But a question mark is not stored in the directory entry.
The amusing part is what happens if you *create* a filename beginning with
the E5h character. Apparently Microsoft picked that E5h character as a
'deleted' marker without realizing that E5 is a perfectly valid character
that someone might want to use in a filename. (It's chr$(229), the lower-
case sigma.) So if you create a filename starting with that character, DOS
will instead store 05h in the directory entry, and treat it as if it were
an E5h. What happens if you create a filename beginning with ^E? I don't
know.
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