Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:39:12 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: "A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk>
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Drive Help
In-Reply-To: <10E30B4676A@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961015153226.20186D@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, A.Appleyard wrote:

> > ... Do you maybe want to know if there is drive A: even if it is empty (i.e.
> > without a floppy inside)?
> 
> That seems sensible. A program complaining "There is no drive A:" when it
> should complain "Drive A: is empty or out of order" is wrong and confusing;

That's not what `getmntent' is for; it is for reporting the _filesystems_ 
mounted on different devices.  An empty drive by definition doesn't have 
any filesystem on it, so it is not reported.

And btw, drive A: is always there on PCs, so you don't need to test 
anything to know whether it is available.

> and leaving it to DOS's usual moan about "Abort? Ignore? [etc]" often messes
> up a carefully worked-out screen layout.

`getmntent' never causes such a message.  In fact, most DPMI hosts out 
there (including CWSDPMI) won't ever let DOS pop such a message, so you 
will rarely see it at all in DJGPP v2.