Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hpsmtc1!swh From: swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Need help removing directory ! Message-ID: <11470036@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> Date: 17 Aug 88 15:12:40 GMT References: <1027@pc.ecn.purdue.edu> Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino Lines: 35 Re: Removing a directory If you are absolutely certain that there are no files (hidden or otherwise) remaining in the directory, I would begin to suspect how the NAME of the DIRECTORY itself is formed. It is possible, in an assembler program, to create filenames and directories that contain embedded illegal characters. Once I had a case where the DIR command displayed a file named "ABC" but I couldn't do anything with it; I always got "file not found" even though the DIR was showing it to me. The kicker was that the complete filename was "ABC XYZ". Notice the embedded blank!!! Apparently the DIR command, when it formats a filename for display, stops at the first blank character (which is quite reasonable, since the internal directory entry pads short names with blanks). If I then tried to ERASE ABC XYZ, it would still treat "ABC" as the complete filename and ignore the "XYZ" part. I couldn't win. The solution was rather trivial (after some thought). I simply entered ERASE ABC* and it finally went away. Before I did this, I made sure there were no other files starting with "ABC" that wanted to retain. If the name of the directory has this problem, you'll have to rename it, perhaps via an assembler program. On the other hand, perhaps you STILL have some files alive within it, files whose names begin with a blank. Use Norton to display the directory contents to see if this is the case. Perhaps you still don't have enough information to solve your problem, but maybe this reply will put you on the right track. -- --------------------- Steve Harrold ...hplabs!hpsmtc1!swh HPG200/13 (408) 447-5580 ---------------------