Chapter 8: Files and the Registry - Programming Microsoft Windows Ce Net 3Rd [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 8: Files and the Registry

Overview

One of the areas where Windows CE diverges furthest from its larger cousin Windows XP is in the area of file storage. Instead of relying on ferromagnetic storage media such as floppy disks or hard disk drives, Windows CE implements a unique RAM-based file system known as the object store. In implementation, the object store more closely resembles a database than it does a file allocation system for a disk. In the object store resides the files as well as the registry for the system and any Windows CE databases. Fortunately for the programmer, most of the unique implementation of the object store is hidden behind standard Win32 functions.

The Windows CE file API is taken directly from Win32, and for the most part, the API is fairly complete. Windows CE also implements the standard registry API, albeit without the vast levels of security found in Windows XP.

Some differences in the object store do expose themselves to the programmer. Execute-in-place files, stored in ROM, appear as files in the object store, but these functions can't be opened and read as standard files. The object store format is undocumented, so there is no way to dig underneath the file system API to look at sectors, clusters, or cylinders of data as you could on a FAT-formatted disk.

The concept of the current directory, so important in other versions of Windows, isn't present in Windows CE. Files are specified by their complete path. The command line shell does maintain its own current directory, but this directory is independent of the file system.

As a general rule, Windows CEChapter 10.