Description
Under MS-DOS it is perfectly fine to create a volume label with the same name as an exiting file or directory within the root directory. This works with Microsoft LABEL and also with the FreeDOS LABEL running under the MS-DOS kernel.
Under the FreeDOS kernel however, the directory entry of an existing file is replaced when a label with the same name is created. I verified by inspecting the root directory sectors that the directory entry for the ordinary file is indeed gone. I have not yet inspected the FAT if there are orphaned clusters.
The kernel IS capable of reading a file with the same name as the volume label, provided that it was previously created correctly under MS-DOS.
Further, label creation fails if a directory with the same name is already there, with the effect that the previous label (if one was there) is deleted. The latter is not a kernel issue as the LABEL command most probably deletes the old label before trying to create a new one.
I further noticed that MS-DOS does not set a creation timestamp for labels:
But FreeDOS does so (bytes 0x10E-0x111):
But I guess this is ok, I document it only for the sake of completeness.