\nIt is possible to create an infinitely recursive directory tree.\nThis throws many recursive directory-traversal functions into disarray.\nHere’s how you do it. (Note: Requires NTFS.)\n<\/P>\n
\nCreate a directory in the root of your C: drive, call it C:\\C,\nfor lack of a more creative name.\nRight-click My Computer and select Manage.\nclick on the Disk Management snap-in.\n<\/P>\n
\nFrom the Disk Management snap-in, right-click the C drive\nand select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”.\n<\/P>\n
\nFrom the “Change Drive Letter and Paths for C:” dialog,\nclick “Add”, then where it says\n“Mount in the following empty NTFS folder”,\nenter “C:\\C”. Click OK.\n<\/P>\n
\nCongratulations, you just created an infinitely recursive directory.\n<\/P>\n
\nC:\\> dir<\/p>\nVolume in drive has no label\n Volume Serial Number is A035-E01D<\/p>\n
Directory of C:\\<\/p>\n
08\/19\/2001 08:43 PM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT\n12\/23\/2004 09:43 PM <JUNCTION> C\n05\/05\/2001 04:09 PM 0 CONFIG.SYS\n12\/16\/2001 04:34 PM <DIR> Documents and Settings\n08\/10\/2004 12:00 AM <DIR> Program Files\n08\/28\/2004 01:08 PM <DIR> WINDOWS\n 2 File(s) 0 bytes\n 4 Dir(s) 2,602,899,968 bytes free<\/p>\n
C:\\> dir C:\\C<\/p>\n
Volume in drive has no label\n Volume Serial Number is A035-E01D<\/p>\n
Directory of C:\\C<\/p>\n
08\/19\/2001 08:43 PM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT\n12\/23\/2004 09:43 PM <JUNCTION> C\n05\/05\/2001 04:09 PM 0 CONFIG.SYS\n12\/16\/2001 04:34 PM <DIR> Documents and Settings\n08\/10\/2004 12:00 AM <DIR> Program Files\n08\/28\/2004 01:08 PM <DIR> WINDOWS\n 2 File(s) 0 bytes\n 4 Dir(s) 2,602,899,968 bytes free<\/p>\n
C:\\> dir C:\\C\\C\\C\\C\\C\\C<\/p>\n
Volume in drive has no label\n Volume Serial Number is A035-E01D<\/p>\n
Directory of C:\\C\\C\\C\\C\\C\\C<\/p>\n
08\/19\/2001 08:43 PM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT\n12\/23\/2004 09:43 PM <JUNCTION> C\n05\/05\/2001 04:09 PM 0 CONFIG.SYS\n12\/16\/2001 04:34 PM <DIR> Documents and Settings\n08\/10\/2004 12:00 AM <DIR> Program Files\n08\/28\/2004 01:08 PM <DIR> WINDOWS\n 2 File(s) 0 bytes\n 4 Dir(s) 2,602,899,968 bytes free\n<\/PRE>\n
\nGo ahead and add as many “\\C”s as you like. You’ll just get your own\nC drive back again.\n<\/P>\n
\nOkay, now that you’ve had your fun,\ngo back to the\n“Change Drive Letter and Paths for C:” dialog and Remove\nthe “C:\\C” entry.\nDo this before you create some real havoc.\n<\/P>\n
\nNow imagine what happens if you had tried a recursive treecopy\nfrom that mysterious C:\\C directory.\nOr if you ran a program that did some sort of recursive operation\nstarting from C:\\C, like, say, trying to add up the sizes of all\nthe files in it.\n<\/P>\n
\nIf you’re writing such a program, you need to be aware of reparse\npoints (that thing that shows up as
<JUNCTION><\/CODE> in the\ndirectory listing).\nYou can identify them because their file attributes include the\nFILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT<\/CODE> flag.\nOf course, what you do when you find one of these is up to you.\nI’m just warning you that these strange things exist and if you\naren’t careful, your program can go into an infinite loop.\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is possible to create an infinitely recursive directory tree. This throws many recursive directory-traversal functions into disarray. Here’s how you do it. (Note: Requires NTFS.) Create a directory in the root of your C: drive, call it C:\\C, for lack of a more creative name. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. click on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-36883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
It is possible to create an infinitely recursive directory tree. This throws many recursive directory-traversal functions into disarray. Here’s how you do it. (Note: Requires NTFS.) Create a directory in the root of your C: drive, call it C:\\C, for lack of a more creative name. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. click on the […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}