I've recently been poking around inside StrongHelp's file format, and seem
to have stumbled on an anomaly compared to the information in the SH-RefMan.

The documentation states that a directory entry for a file points to a data
block, with "DATA" at offset 0, the size at offset 4 and the data from
offset 8 onwards. This means that the size in the data block is the size of
the file plus 8 bytes.

The directory entry itself has the length of object at offset 12, with a
note stating "(not counting guard and length word)". The root directory
entry similarly states that the size is "(excluding the first two words)".

However, reality says that the two size fields are identical in value, and
for a file they are both 8 bytes larger than the size reported for the file
by the StrongHelp Image Filing System. So both appear to include the guard
and size words. For a directory, both include the 12 bytes of the "DIR$"
block header.

I'm assuming that the SH-RefMan is wrong, but does anyone know any more?

--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England

http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/