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    The Old New Thing

    January 2005

    Why did the Win64 team choose the LLP64 model?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 31, 2005Jan 31, 200501/31/05

    Over on Channel 9,
    member Beer28 wrote,
    “I can’t imagine there are too many problems with programs
    that have type widths changed.”
    I got a good chuckle out of that and made a note to write up
    an entry on the Win64 data model.

    Capturing the current directory from a batch file
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 28, 2005Jan 28, 200501/28/05

    Sometimes people go to great lengths to get information which
    is available in a much simpler way.
    We saw it a few days ago when we found a 200+-line C# program that
    could be replaced with

    a 90-byte batch file.
    Here’s another example

    of a rather roundabout way of
    capturing the current directory from a batch file.

    Control how much network bandwith Automatic Updates will use
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 27, 2005Jan 27, 200501/27/05

    By default, the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) which is used by Automatic Updates will use idle network bandwidth for downloading updates. This is normally not a problem.
    One case where it can be a problem is you have a large LAN that shares a single DSL connection.

    The strangest way of rounding down to the nearest quarter
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 26, 2005Jan 26, 200501/26/05

    In a previous life, I wrote database software.
    A customer complained that one of their reports was taking an
    unacceptably long amount of time to generate, and I was asked
    to take a look at it even though it wasn’t my account.

    Why do files and directories with no time/date mess up sorting in Explorer?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 25, 2005Jan 25, 200501/25/05

    If you have a file or directory that does not have a last-modified date, you may find that it causes Explorer to sort very strangely. (How do you get a file or directory with no last-modifiied date? It’s hard to do;

    Bringing cryptic command lines to Windows
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 24, 2005Jan 24, 200501/24/05

    The CMD.EXE batch language

    can be awfully cryptic,
    but for those who miss the richness of command lines like

    kill -1 $(ps -ef | grep inetd | grep -v grep | tr -s ” ” | cut -f2 -d ” “)

    or bursts of line noise masquerading as a pipeline of
    “find”,

    Alton Brown book appearance report
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 24, 2005Jan 24, 200501/24/05

    Right on schedule, Alton Brown appeared at the Elliot Bay Book Company bookstore in downtown Seattle. One of my friends wondered aloud, “Wait a second, he’s promoting his cookbook. How do you do a reading from a cookbook?”
    He didn’t read from his cookbook.

    Why are kernel HANDLEs always a multiple of four?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 21, 2005Jan 21, 200501/21/05

    Not very well known is that the bottom two bits of kernel HANDLEs
    are always zero; in other words, their numeric value is
    always a multiple of 4.
    Note that this applies only to kernel HANDLEs;
    it does not apply to

    pseudo-handles
    or to any other type of handle
    (USER handles,

    Hyperlinking to Hutchison Whampoa Limited forbidden
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 20, 2005Jan 20, 200501/20/05

    Maybe they don’t want people to find them.
    The copyright notice for the web site of Hutchison Whampoa Limited states,
    Copyright Hutchison Whampoa Limited. 2003. All rights reserved.
    No person, whether an individual or a body corporate, shall create or establish a hyperlink to the HWL Corporate Website by hypertext reference or imaging without the written permission of Hutchison.

    A 90-byte “whereis” program
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 20, 2005Jan 20, 200501/20/05

    Sometimes people try too hard.

    You can download a

    C# program to look for a file on your PATH,
    or you can use a 90-character batch file:

    @for %%e in (%PATHEXT%) do @for %%i in (%1%%e) do @if NOT “%%~$PATH:i”==”” echo %%~$PATH:i

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