From: sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu (Charles Sandmann)
Message-Id: <10109240049.AA03150@clio.rice.edu>
Subject: Win 2000 rm -rf disaster info
To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 19:49:19 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il ('Eli Zaretskii')
In-Reply-To: <250B3114DA16D511B82C00E0094005F8023FC198@MSGWAW11> from "Wojciech Galazka" at Sep 22, 2001 09:54:36 PM
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> From partial logs that I had on the disk it seems that in the direcory
> \djgpp.2\gnu\gcc-3.02\build.djg\i586-pc-msdosdjgpp\libstdc++-v3\src
> an attempt was made to delete the subdirectory 
> .libs\libstdc++.lax
> that resulted in deleteion of  \ instead

I created a directory with the name above; then subdirectory as above.

I can reproduce this horrible behavior.  Using Eli's suggestion of rm -ir
it asks if I want to decend into that directory, I say yes, and then it
proceeds to list directories/files in the root.  If I ctrl-C out it leaves
me in the lower directory - but any attempt to run dos/djgpp images that
low in the directory tree generates an error "The system cannot execute
the specified program."

The long name before starting rm is 69 chars, short name is 55 chars.
Running the image always forces the returned CD to be short named.
Command.com will not allow you to cd further in the tree than "libs~1"
(ie .libs) that is 8 directory names deep (62 chars short, 75 chars long).
If I start from command.com, it will set my default directory to d:\
on exit from rm -ir (from cmd.exe it leaves me in the right place but
prevents me from launching any dos images from that directory).

I'll do some more tests to see if it's a short name length, long name
length or depth issue, and if we can tell failure.