Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1993 20:45:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew Tucker <a_tucker AT paul DOT spu DOT edu>
Subject: Re: managing diff's
To: Eric Backus <ericb AT lsid DOT hp DOT com>
Cc: djgpp <djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu>


On Tue, 27 Apr 1993, Eric Backus wrote:

> > The other thing is adding support for some of the FCB functions to
> > exphdler.c.
> 
> I'm no DOS expert, but I thought FCB functions were an older, outdated
> method of accessing DOS files.  Why would we want support for these in
> go32?


Yes and no.  DOS still uses FCBs to handle files, but has abstracted the
file system one more layer.  Starting with version 2.0 (I think), files
are handled with "handles" or "magic cookies", as in UNIX.  These are
simply indexes into FCB tables which are internal to DOS.  This is why you
must say "FILES=nnn" in your config.sys file; DOS uses it to allocate a
table big enough to handle that many files.



/* Andrew */

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
 and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality"
				Albert Einstein