Fooling Around

I decided yo update NTFS Links to fix an annoying issue several people complained about. If you copy a directory and decide to, yes, copy and not create soft link, you will be still prompted with the same question for every subdirectory inside. Windows gove no option to learn this is actually a subdirectory and not a different operation so the workaround is not as simple as it seems.

The solution is the following: each of the dialogs currently is suppressible using a special check box, which if checked makes dialog don’t appear unless Control key is pressed. Since this version, if unchecked, the dialog box is still suppressible while you hold Shift down. Thus, hold shift and have subdirectories processed with default option without prompt.

The rest of the changes, significant amount of in fact, add no more features. The extension is changed to using Unicode version of APIs (you can expect it to work as much as 1% faster), compiled with new compiler, without dependencies and thus distributable became unexpectedly small, 251K as compared to previous 336K.

What’s new in this build?

• New: Shift key being hold suppresses prompt dialogs

Application Name: Alax.Info NTFS Links
License: Free for personal use, request commercial licenses via email or contact form
Latest Version: 1.1.2
Download Link: Alax.Info NTFS Links 1.1.2 (251K)

Another interesting feature of NTFS file system is alternate data streams, which basically means that a file may be attached extra data such as for example “slave files”. The tricky peculiarity is that data streams are almost invisible to Windows shell, though Windows uses stream to attach version information (Summary property page in file properties) and zone information to mark downloaded files from unsafe locations.

The idea I thought about was that alternate data streams may be useful to create a named copy of file contents, something similar to checkingin to version control system. The idea does not seem to be worth implementation though as it is unpredictable how software (such as word processors) is updating the files. If the file is re-created, the existing alternate data streams would get lost with saving of the new content.

Additionally, a good introduction into NTFS features, including hard links and streams (I am actually surprised I came across these only now):

• A Programmer’s Perspective on NTFS 2000 Part 1: Stream and Hard Link
• A Programmer’s Perspective on NTFS 2000 Part 2: Encryption, Sparseness, and Reparse Points