Some senseless babbling from Leonard Erickson to Ian Moote
on 10-28-99  00:11 about File Systems...

 -=> Quoting Ian Moote to LEONARD ERICKSON <=-
 
 LE> Well, there *is* one reason for HPFS on removable media. Long
 LE> filenames. At least until and unless OS/2 gets support for Win95
 LE> style long file names.
 LE>
 LE> I'm sure someone is going to mention using ZIP or some other
 LE> archiver. Many of the files I'm putting on the ZIP disks are things
 LE> I want *direct* access to. Not access thru an archiver.
 
 IM> OS/2 keeps track of long filenames on removable FAT drives. I just 
 IM> double-checked: I had a file on floppy named "JIM". I renamed it,
 IM> using  WPS, to "Jimbo a-logo!.blobbo.txt". Checking on my DOS laptop,
 IM> the  filename is now "JIMBO_A-.TXT", but it still comes up as "Jimbo a-
 IM> logo.blobbo.txt" on OS/2. [:)

 LE> That's nice. I'd like to be able to go one step farther and assign a
 LE> *specific* shortname to a file without losing the long name. Even if
 LE> it used up another directory entry. Then we'd be able to keep old
 LE> programs happy indefinitely and still use long filenames. Unix can do
 LE> this, I just forget the command.

This is strictly speaking possible, but not taken advantage of by the OS.
There's no required attachment between a file's directory name, and it's
.LONGNAME extended attribute (which is how what Ian mentioned above is
done).

The PM file dialogs don't recognize the .LONGNAME attribute as a filename,
nor does DosOpen(), the API that opens files.

Mike Ruskai
thannymeister@yahoo.com


... Contrary to popular belief, the cat is not a domesticated animal.

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