If the link can be though of as a permanent file equate then a rename should
only change the final target nothing in between.  I have not looked in this
to much but there should be a way of changing the link to point to the new
file if desired.

-------------------------------------------------
Larry Simonsen                Phone: 801-489-2450
Flowserve Corporation     Fax: 801-491-1750
PO Box 2200                    http://www.Flowserve.com
Springville, UT 84663      e-mail: [log in to unmask]
-------------------------------------------------
All opinions expressed herein are my own and reflect, in no way, those of my
employer.

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, December 28, 2000 12:45 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: MPE misdesign

Ted suggests:

> Pssst, HP.  Fix this instead!
>
>  Here's my official complaint/warning/whatever about how :PURGE deals with
>  links.  A :PURGE of a link does *not* purge the link.  It purges the file
> the
>  link points to.  It's not at all obvious to me why one would want it to
do
>  this and I'd rather not think too long about my recent experience
regarding
>  why one would NOT want it to do this!
>
>  For anyone not terribly familiar with links, be warned -- :PURGE is not
the
>  same as :RM.HPBIN.SYS (or :PURGELINK for that matter).
>
>  For anyone else, can you give me some understanding of why this was
designed
>  this way?

To me, it's perfectly logical the way that PURGE works through a link. A
link, after all, is meant to be not much more than a "permanent" file
equation, so that if you either purge the "pointed to" file or purge the
link-named file, the result is the same: the original file is gone and the
link/file equation remains.

PURGELINK is the mechanism to get rid of the link, as Ted says. Further, in
congruence with standard file equation behavior, purging the link leaves the
"pointed to" file alone, which is what you should also expect.

If there's anything that I find potentially confusing about links, it is not
the PURGE command, it is the RENAME command. You can rename a file using
either its true name or using its link name, but once you do that, the link
becomes worthless. It points to nothing now.

While I can easily understand the overhead & accounting problem of renaming
a
"pointed to" file by renaming the original file itself (all existing links
would have to be searched to see if they were affected), renaming a file by
using its link should be a very easy thing to fix (the linked to file name
could be changed in the link at exactly that time).

Personally, if I were going to fix something about links, it would be the
renaming attribute. I don't see that a rename should make a file "disappear"
from its links in the same manner that a purge does. Moreover, if I were
going to fix the problem, I would do it by searching all links, not just the
link possibly currently in use, so that all links are guaranteed to be
correct at all times.

Wirt Atmar