Those Pesky Comma Files

by Dick Estel

Ever since I started reading Commodore club newsletters ten years ago, I've been seeing variations on
a theme: How to get rid of those pesky "," file names. The gist of these articles was that you'd
accidentally created a file named ","; you could not get rid of it with the normal DOS command to
scratch a file, and here's how to do it.

All those who've been plagued with this problem, raise your hands (no hands go up). Just what I
thought. I never reprinted those articles, because I've never met anyone who mentioned this problem,
never experienced it, and suspected that it was not much of a problem.

Ever curious, I finally got around to experimenting with the subject by deliberately trying to create such
a file. I have had weird file names, created by accident; but I have always had a secret weapon. If the
normal Commodore DOS command didn't work, I just loaded my alternate operating system (aka
GEOS), and dumped the offending file in the trash. GEOS will display an icon for every file, even the
strange file I recently found which had no name (it appeared as "    " in the Commodore directory).

First I created a one-line file as follows:

10 PRINT "Test File"

Then I attempted to save it with the file name ",". The disk drive light flashed rapidly for a while, and
continued to flash after the cursor returned. Having Jiffy-DOS installed, I pressed @ to get the error
message: "File exists" (!)

Of course, I had no such file visible in the directory, but this result hints at why it may be a problem to
get rid of such a file when you do indeed encounter one. 

Then I attempted to rename an existing file but got a Syntax Error with no further explanation. My final
attempt was to save a file with this name in The Write Stuff. This did the job--but when I tried to load
this file, I got the message "file not found."

Going back to BASIC, I tried to scratch the file, with no luck. So the "pesky comma file" is not a myth.
My next venture, of course, was to find the article explaining how to get rid of the pesky file, which is
summarized below. The instructions worked to a T (or perhaps to a comma).

While I was thus engaged, I also attempted to save a file as "   " (i.e. QUOTE SPACE QUOTE). This
worked fine, although it could not be saved without the space; "" was rejected with the message
"Missing File Name." This one-line file showed 74 blocks in the directory! Attempting to load with the
Jiffy-DOS file load command (/ filename; entered as SLASH SPACE, produced the message "missing
file name." Then I tried loading it with the LOAD/RUN command (F5 which prints the UP ARROW)
in front of the file name in the directory. This loaded but did not run the file; but it ran correctly once
with the RUN command. Subsequent attempts to load this way with / or F5 loaded the FIRST file on
the disk!

Attempting to scratch the file with the J-DOS command did not work. When I validated the disk, the
file was still there. When I used the technique described below, it went away along with the file "," and
another one named "!".

GETTING RID OF THAT PESKY COMMA FILE

1. List all one-character file names by selectively loading the directory as follows:

     LOAD"$0:?",8 (with J-DOS, /$0:?)

If any non-comma files are shown that you want to keep, rename them.

Then use the following command to scratch all one-character filenames:

     OPEN 15,8,15: PRINT #15,"S0:?" (with J-DOS, @S0:?)

When you have a disk with misbehaving files, it's a good idea to copy the good files to a fresh disk.

(The instructions here were summarized from an article by Jim Butterfield in Commodore World #4)


(From The Interface, newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group, via the Commodore Information
Center http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)