On 11 Oct 2007 at 20:14, dwight elvey wrote:
Another way might be to keep a random number, create
from
a hash of the information on the disk, that would need to be read
before writing.
Uh, that's what CP/M does--that value of CKS in the DPB tells CP/M
how many directory entries to checksum--which it does on open calls.
Unfortunately, one needn't do an open call to create a file--a valid
filled-in FCB usually is good enough. There were applications that
swapped FCBs around--and before CP/M 2.0, there were no random-access
positioning calls, so programs would do their own FCB fiddling. A
hole that you could drive a truck through.
All of that got pretty much taken care of with CP/M 3.0 and MP/M, but
CDOS predates those. But even if you could tell that a disk was
changed, there was no system noficiation function to call in CP/M to
tell the OS to check the disk.
Cheers,
Chuck