AmigaDos wont show contents of Games directory?

[AmigaDunc]

Hi All,

Im not hot on AmigaDos, and I was trying to WHDLoad a game from Shell CLI to try and narrow down another issue with the miggy.

Does any one know why typing the following would not display the contents of the Games folder on my CF card HD?

System:Games> dir
and it does not list anything.
It just repeats the line above.

In Opus you can or ScalOS you can see the hundreds of games and several layers of sub folders.

But AmigaDos cannot find any files in Games folder?

It is the correct file path.
I used the following to check

[thomas]

Most likely because the games are in a drive called Games, not in a folder called Games on the System drive.

try

cd games:

instead of

cd games

The former changes into a drive called Games. The latter changes into a folder called Games relative to the current directory.

[DisasterIncarna]

does "List" also show nothing? I am probably showing my stupidity after all these years but i didnt even know we had a proper "DIR" command, i thought we just had List and DIR was just an alias that used List? goes to show im still behind in common knowledge

[AmigaDunc]

Originally Posted by thomas

Most likely because the games are in a drive called Games, not in a folder called Games on the System drive.

try

cd games:

instead of

cd games

The former changes into a drive called Games. The latter changes into a folder called Games relative to the current directory.

Hi thanks for the tip.
This did help a lot, i did not realise the difference between "cd Games" and "cd Games:" but as stated these are two different features. Folders, or Drives.

Im use to MS Dos which I have not encountered this before.

Thank you.

[AmigaDunc]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

does "List" also show nothing? I am probably showing my stupidity after all these years but i didnt even know we had a proper "DIR" command, i thought we just had List and DIR was just an alias that used List? goes to show im still behind in common knowledge

Hi will give this command a try aswell. thanks.

I am use to tyoing dir/w/p but this is a MS Dos command, Ive realised the commands and features are different in AmigaDos.

Will have to get a manual.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

does "List" also show nothing? I am probably showing my stupidity after all these years but i didnt even know we had a proper "DIR" command, i thought we just had List and DIR was just an alias that used List?

AmigaDOS and its precursors would imitate what came before, hence the "Dir" command which provides easy, but terse access to the contents of directories and volumes, and even features an interactive mode which allows you to visit the scenic places you never knew existed under the hood.

Because "Dir" is terse, there had to be a verbose counterpart, and this is the "List" command. While "Dir" expects to look into directories or volumes, complaining if it stubs its toes stumbling over files, "List" can do it all and show it all, no matter what it finds. However, it comes with a price: it might not do what you expected it to do. The "List" command does not expect the name of a directory or file, although it will graciously deign to make use of either, telling you what it found under its respective name. No, what it expects is a search pattern, and not just any random old kind. It has to be an AmigaDOS search pattern.

Sure, "List foo" should work if a directory entry named "foo" exists, but "List (foo)" will almost certainly not if a directory entry named "(foo") exists. Why is that? It is because "(" and ")" are AmigaDOS wildcard pattern characters and the "List" command will keep looking for any directory entry whose name matches it. Funny enough, a directory entry named "(foo)" does not match the AmigaDOS search pattern "(foo)" which is why you are likely going to go from puzzled, to incredulous, to supremely annoyed and turning more and more purple in the face with every passing nanosecond.

It may be no consolation that all over the world there is bound to be somebody right now who goes through the three stages of AmigaDOS-befuddlement at rapidly accelerating speed. The difference in behaviour between the "Dir" and "List" commands is the gift which keeps on giving. Mostly giving headaches and anger. Let's appreciate that for what it is, since there are only few such puzzling things in the world which seem to be designed to tell you that, let's face it, you ought to have read the manual first (which manual? actually, all the AmigaDOS manuals ever published, including their indices). And nobody likes a CLI command that revels in exuding the kind of smugness mere 1,000 lines of code should not be able to wield.