[syslinux] [PATCH 1/1] COM32: Add stub functions for directories

[Gene Cumm]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:01 AM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> Gene Cumm wrote:
>>
>> Peter, it is my intention to start looking at the different syslinux
>> variants.  It seems that some, if not all, of these functions are
>> already implemented but do not have a convenient API by which I can
>> utilize them.  This would first require extending the COMBOOT API to
>> add these functions but then turn around and implement them to just
>> return an error, I think by "equ comapi_err".
>>
>
> They aren't, really.  There is no underlying function to do directory
> extraction, as opposed to directory matching.  This may seem like a
> trivial distinction, but in some cases -- e.g. VFAT with its UTF-16
> filenames -- it's not.
>
>        -hpa

I may be trying to oversimplify the code in my head but it would seem
that file/directory matching is essentially iterating through a
directory extraction then testing to see if the extracted filename
matches the filename that you are searching for, stopping the
iteration if found or continuing the iteration if not.

When I said that it seemed like the functions exist to do the
directory operations, I misused functions and should have said that
the code exists.  The pieces of code to be able to understand the
filesystem are there but possibly not in a usable manner to be used by
such a group of functions and API calls.