Bad Undo Behaviour in Windows 95>XP

From: David Hayes (d.hayes_at_abm-uk.com)
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 06:57:12 -0700

I sent this as a bug report to Microsoft about a year
ago, and nothing has ever been mentioned about it. So I
am posting this to the general community, as I feel you
should all be warey of this little bug.

Quotes original email:

When trying to copy a file across today from one
directory to another, on the same drive, I came across
this problem.
 
I had a file CustomDataExample.java sat on my desktop,
and also in the root of my C:\ drive. I had updated the
file on the desktop and wished to propogate the change to
my C:\ root. To acomplish this, I had left clicked and
dragged, holding (by accident) the ALT key, instead of
the CTRL key. This as you are aware creates a shortcut to
the original file in the location you "dropped" the file.
Having realised that this was not what I wanted to do, I
hit CTRL-Z for undo, and what came next wasn't what was
expected. Instead of deleting the newly created Shortcut
file, it actually deleted the CustomDataExample.java on
the C:\ drive. I have since tested this bug on a Windows
XP Pro SP1 machine, 95, 2000 Pro, 2000 Server, all with
the same fault.
As I am aware of the problem, I don't need to obtain a
patch, as it is a mere inconvience to a foolish error on
my part, but felt that others may benefit from knowing
this issue exists."

Knowledge is power!

David Hayes

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