Re: No more 8-character limit?

On 29/03/10 16:44, LuKreme wrote:
> On 29-Mar-2010, at 07:51, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 29 Mar 2010, Joan Miquel Torres Rigo wrote:
>>> 2010/3/28 Benjamin R. Haskell:
>>>
>>>> Are there any systems in common, current use for which this causes
>>>> problems? (Why would people be using Vim in DOS emulators?)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Why would people be using Windows on servers?
>>>
>>> But there is.
>>
>> Corporations that want support, or who use Windows-only programs.
>>
>> Windows isn't the point, anyway. Post-3.1 Windows versions don't have
>> an 8-character limit.
>
> Er... Windows 95, 98, and ME sorta still had that limit (file names were 8.3, but the system could expand them. However, if your calls were not accessing the windows APIs, you were still limited to 8.3 filenames.
>

Even on later Windows systems, 8.3 names still exist because they are
part of the FAT filesystem specification: the directory "line" (of 64
bytes IIRC) containing the date, access flags, starting cluster number,
etc., of each entry also has 8+3 bytes for the name; Long File Names
(when present) are stored in UCS-2le (or is it UTF-16le?) on one or more
additional lines in a manner which makes them look like some sort of
disk labels (and thus invisible) to systems ignorant of them. Each file
or directory has an 8.3 name and usually an LFN too; the LFN is used (if
present of course) for most display purposes, but the file (or
directory) can still be accessed by the 8.3 name if desired, and that is
one of the "tricks" which can be used in Vim to avoid problems when the
LFN contains troublesome characters such as spaces. For instance,

:view c:/PROGRA~1/vim/vim72

will usually bring up your $VIMRUNTIME directory (in a netrw buffer) on
most Windows systems. (In this case, of course, :view $VIMR<Tab><CR>
would be more economical of keystrokes, but the example can be generalized.)

Best regards,
Tony.
--
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- E. Rutherford

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