Re: 8.3 filename restriction

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:53:29 +0000
> Cc: martin rudalics <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden
> From: address@hidden
> 
> > 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.

It's not the command line that chops the file names, it's the system
call itself.  Any DOS system call that accepts a file name first
canonicalizes it, and during that canonicalization the file name is
truncated to 8+3 limits.

Thus, if you later look for the chopped file name using the original
long name, it will be chopped again, and the file will be found.