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What it does

Deletes the user specified directory and all the files and sub-directories that are in its path.

Be careful with the Delete Tree command. Although the Delete Tree command will not delete protected directories and files, it will not prompt you before it starts to delete unprotected files in the user specified path.

Delete Tree does not delete files from the current working directory.

Delete Tree will prompt the user before it deletes a directory if the user does not specify a directory to delete.

To delete the directory TEMP and all the files and sub-directories contained within the path without prompting:

    DelTree D1:TEMP.

To delete specific directories from the current working directory with prompting (just type Y to delete a directory and N to skip a directory) use:

    DelTree Dn:.

Hidden files will not be detected by Delete Tree. Be sure to pay special attention to error codes resulting from Delete Tree operations. Hidden files, for example, within the user specified path will return error number 167.

The most unusual error is error number 166—position range error. Unusual in the way that it may or may not occur. The SpartaDOS X manual states that this could be a programming error. Well, in the case of Delete Tree, it isn't. Delete Tree uses the same tree routines as all the other programs from the Atari 8-bit–SpartaDOS Project—programs such as Tree, FAtr, and FTD, just to name a few—and this error never occurs with these programs.

My research into the problem led me to an XIO #33 (delete command) bug in SpartaDOS. If you are an avid reader of the Atari 8-bit digest, you may have read my bug report on the SpartaDOS XIO #33 command. It seems that the XIO #33 command will actually expand the directory by an additional 23 (null) bytes—a full directory entry. In cases where the last data sector of a directory is full the directory will expand adding another sector. Any program using the command XIO #33 will cause such directories to expand.

The problem then is if the directory Delete Tree is working on is full, the directory will expand resulting in the position range error.

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