Subject: Re: 31 Character File Name Length Limit
From: Matthew Geier (matthew@arts.usyd.edu.au)
Date: Mon Apr 02 2001 - 00:21:52 EDT
Alon wrote:
>
> This is very true. Which is why most OS's don't have length limits anymore
> (mostly). Unfortunately I still have to deal with an OS that does. I'm
> hoping the switch to OS X will eventually solve my problem, but for now I'd
> settle for a comprimise. A simple solution to the truncation problem is to
> do what Microsoft does:
>
> Program Files = progra~1
> Programs I Use = progra~2
> Programs = progra~3.......etc.
>
> It isn't very pretty I know, but it does work. The names might not be
> particularly obvious, but at least they'd be seen on the Mac side.
The Microsoft one is simpler that it looks - it does that name mangle
at file creation time. Windows file systems store 2 names. The 8.3 and
the 'long' one. It doesn't do it on the fly like Samba does, and
NetAtalk needs to do. You have to attempt to get the same 'mangled' name
each time. M$ does it once and saves in in the Filesystem.
I understood MacOS is suppose to handle it by it self - HFS+ supports
longer names, but Finder doesn't. I seem to recall some time back in the
dim dark past, NetAtalk sent longer names to Macs, but some Finder
versions crashed in response instead of truncating the name.
I guess you could find the bit of code that hides the long names,
disable it and see how your mac works. Maybee OS9 fixed this problem.
Classic under OSX beta seems to handle it gracefully.
-- Matthew Geier matthew@arts.usyd.edu.au Arts IT Unit +61 2 9351 4713 Sydney University
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sun Oct 14 2001 - 03:04:36 EDT