Re: 8.3 filename restriction

[tomas]

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On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 04:45:34PM +0900, Kenichi Handa wrote:
> In article <address@hidden>, martin rudalics <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Admittedly, thinking of a good filename fitting the restriction may take
> > some time.  However, I'm afraid that removing the restriction will soon
> > lead to more monstrosities like "idlw-complete-structtag.el".
> 
> To my understanding, 8.3 name restriction actually means
> that all filenames (in the same directory?) must be
> distinguished by the first 8 (or 7? 6?)  characters.  So,
> idlw-complete-structtag.el is ok unless there's another file
> that starts with "idlw-complete".  Is it right?

Well.. the traditional DOS file system hadn't room for more. Whether the
command line chopped off the name, I don't know.

The dot actually wasn't stored, the name had 8 characters plus three
chars for the ending.

Later Widows did incredible tricks to stitch together several directory
entries to make longer names possible.

> And, I remember that there were another filename restriction
> which limits the total length to 14 (or so) characters for
> some other system.  Does anyone remember the detail?

Good old classical UNIX. Ah, the times...

Regards
- -- tomás
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