[Coco] 'arc' copy command and Stack Overflow (ERROR #207)

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 25 January 2015 22:57:06 Stephen H. Fischer did opine
And Gene did reply:
> Be careful, NitrOS-9 has changed some related things.
> 
> My similar Archive program counted on the return code from Disk Full to
> stop and tell the user.
> 
> Upon changing the syntax for another utility I thought I was done.
> 
> Then I discovered that the disk full error was not being returned to
> the program.

That is a pretty serious charge Stephen.  No coder in his right mind would 
remove that error return.

What edition number is your in use rbf.mn saying it is?
 
> Thus I needed to put a warning on my Colorful Sled text editor that use
> with floppies or other small disks with little remaining space was not
> advised.
> 
> No where to report the problem, no one interested, no one to fix it.
> 
Now days, this is the right place I think.  This is after all, a community 
maintained os, and we are the community.

Humm, the rbf.mn in the level1 tree of my last pull back in Nov 2014is 
edition 26!
But let me check if level2 is different, I don't think they should be.
At any rate, this is too short by several pages of printout, and does NOT 
ever load an #e$Full error anyplace in it.

Humm, this is better, the level2 version claims its edition 37, much more 
believable.

But while the labels etc are the same as when I last worked on it, someone 
(ATD) now has comments all over, reverting some of my faster 6309 code for 
the slower original.  The diff is 8 machine cycles per instance.  Now, 
since there is no mention of anyone whose initials are ATD in the edit 
trail at the top of the file, who is ATD?

At any rate, the path to an exit from the time regs.b is loaded with 
#E$Full is quite convoluted.  Its getting loaded is the result of looking 
at the allocation map and finding no more usable storage space.  My quick 
checks do not see regs.b being used in the first 1 or two jumps after it 
has been loaded, but it is possible someone re-used regs.b, clearing the 
error.

If you would like to help test, back up a few releases and find an edition 
34,  move it into the current hg pull after renaming this one, and go back 
the the build root, do a make clean dskclean; make dsk.  Build a system 
disk using that one and then fill up a disk to overflowing.  If you do not 
get an #E$Full (hex $F0, decimal 240) return then its being thrown away 
someplace external to rbf.mn.

> Back in the Delphi days a report would have produced a fix to OS-9 in
> days, maybe even from Kevin Darling.
> 
Be very very careful what you ask for.  One of Kevin's Christmas presents 
was a new rbf.mn, but he had carefully excised all the multiple sector 
cluster code from it. Maybe it was not intentional, but he crippled os9's 
ability to use bigger hard drives forever when he did that. When I 
volunteered to 6309 that code for Wes Gale all those years ago, a couple 
of odd items made me go back and dis the rmf.mn on the level 2 
distribution disk, where I did find that code and hauled it back into the 
version I was working on, fixing one bug and making another that has since 
been excised.

The point is, that without that code, we would all be scrounging dumpsters 
looking for drives of a maximum size of a few k over 131 megabytes.  Now 
we have a limit of 4Gb I believe with that code I put back in.  There was 
one single equ hard coded in it, because there was not an equ listed in 
what was rbfdefs at the time that matched it. Probably still isn't.

Do those tests please, and advise.  And who is ATD??

> SHF
> 
> Attached is a PDF of the commands, binary is on SHF888 on my web page:
> 
> http://home.mindspring.com/~sfischer1/
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Allen Huffman" <alsplace at pobox.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 5:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] 'arc' copy command and Stack Overflow (ERROR #207)
> 
> >> On Jan 25, 2015, at 7:11 PM, Robert Gault <robert.gault at att.net>
> >> wrote:
> >> 
> >> My arc has crc $B12074 and says ed2. There are other archive
> >> programs such as lha that might have a larger capacity.
> > 
> > Ah. This "arc" is not an archiver -- it's a file copier, and one of
> > the most-used tools I have ever used on OS-9. I will type out the
> > help screen:
> > 
> > arc -?
> > 
> > Usage: arc [-acdeflmuv] from_dir to_dir
> > 
> >     a = all files
> >     c = confirm file if not there
> >     d = confirm non-existant directory
> >     e = confirm existing directory
> >     f = prevent copy of files
> >    
> >    ln = only n levels of the tree (1..9)
> >    
> >     m = do multilple (all) directories <- typo not mine
> >     v = verify the copy
> >     u = force uppercase for comparisons
> > 
> > I think Bill Pearce (?) was the one who said he also used it. I do
> > not recall where I got it from, but it's amazing. I have never had
> > it fail until tonight ;-) --
> > Allen Huffman - PO Box 22031 - Clive IA 50325 - 515-999-0227
> > (vmail/TXT only) Sub-Etha Software - http://www.subethasoftware.com
> > - Established 1990! Sent from my MacBook.
> > 
> > P.S. Since 4/15/14, I have earned OVER $600  in Amazon gift cards via
> > Swagbucks! Use my link and I get credit:
> > http://swagbucks.com/refer/allenhuffman


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS