Stan writes:

> > The "simple" and "hard" cure for the problem is to use the presence of the
>  > file's name in the directory as *the* state variable, where the O/S has
>  > written the name into the directory only *after* the file write has been
>  > completed, not at the outset of the write process. You can't download a
>  > before you know that it exists.
>  >
>  > Unfortunately, I don't know of any operating system that operates in that
>  > manner -- but you could easily simulate the process in MPE if the COPY
>
>  except, uh, MPE :)
>
>  That's the default mode of operation for MPE:
>
>     FOPEN ( "foo", various options including "new, output")
>     FWRITE...
>     FCLOSE (  , 1, 0);
>
>  the file doesn't appear in the directory until the FCLOSE...exactly what
>  Wirt seems to want.
>
>  Note: with MPE/iX (not MPE V), one can open the file in a manner that
>  inserts the name into the directory immediately ...
>  which is a nice option to have. (HPFOPEN, item 3, value 4)

Are you sure?

It's easy to demonstrate that the COPY function doesn't work that way. I
realize that COPY is a program and not merely a simple intrinsic call, but I
would think that whoever programmed COPY up would have done something very
much similar to what you outlined above.

The difference in COPY's behavior and yours may be that COPY is first
BUILDing a file of the proper format and length before it actually begins
writing anything into the file, and thus the directory entry is present
before the file is populated with data, but that would seem an odd way to
accomplish the task.

Wirt Atmar

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