File and Directory Operations

File operations have undergone a distinct change from Windows 3.x to 98/95/NT—perhaps, on the surface, the most distinct changes of all. The reasons for such drastic changes, as opposed to the relatively simple changes in many other areas, are a direct consequence of three major factors:

Changes in the Windows NT file system, which supports both the DOS 16-bit FAT system and the new NT 32-bit file system.
Changes in the Windows 98 file system, which supports both the DOS 16-bit FAT and the 32-bit FAT32 file systems (see the “FAT, FAT32, and NTFS File Systems” section later in this appendix).
Changes in the FAT file system for both Windows 98 and NT (but not Windows 3.1), which now supports long filenames (see the “Long Filenames” section later in this appendix).
The introduction of the 32-bit Unicode character system, which is available as an alternative to the familiar 16-bit ANSI character system. Also, the Unicode character system is responsible, in part, for the changes in string-handling operations.

Here, I’ll present only a brief overview of the changes involved in moving file operations from Windows 3.x to 98/95/NT. What you need to keep in mind for now is that both file and directory operations have changed drastically, and for application conversions from Windows 3.x to 98/95/NT, you must take these changes into account.

NOTE

The FileView demo on the CD accompanying this book demonstrates the Windows 98/95/NT file and directory operations. This demo is discussed in Chapter 12.