WH>> This got several programs.  Basically, when IBM started to maintain
 WH>> the archive bit on  directory entries programs that didn't properly
 WH>> account for the archive bit would not see directories where the
 WH>> archive bit was set.  It wasn't an IBM error per se, just laziness
 WH>> and sloppy coding on the part of some programmers but the result was
 WH>> reasonably wide spread.  [...]

 MR> Cripes.  I guess that means they just did an equality comparison with
 MR> FILE_DIRECTORY, rather than a bitwise AND, or using a bit field (my
 MR> preference), etc.
 MR>
 MR> Pretty stupid.

Seconded.   

I speak as one who has written plenty of programs that do
DosFind{First,Next,Close}, which have nary a problem with directories having
the archive bit set.  But then I have a fair amount of experience of some of
the unusual, yet perfectly legal, things that various PC applications and
utilities have done over the years which any decent tool should be designed to 
cope with, such as directories created with the archive and system bits set,
filenames that contain unusual characters such as "{" and "}", and so forth.

( Actually, come to think of it, how do the programs that break when any bit
but the directory bit is set on a directory cope with directories such as
C:\Nowhere, which has been a standard part of OS/2 since version 2.0 ? )

 ¯ JdeBP ®

--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
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