long file names, anyone know the history?
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long file names, anyone know the history?
I recently spent some time with my old franklin ace (apple ][ clone) and had forgotten that apple's DOS supported long file names and file names with spaces even way back then. what were the reasons for having only 8 character names on PCs until windows 95?
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I believe it was a carryover from CP/M (which MS-DOS came from) which only allowed 8 characters for the filename and 3 for the extension (FAT12 filesystem I think). I believe Windows 95 allowed long filenames because it made multiple directory entries as needed to handle the longer names (FAT16).
Then larger hard drives and FAT32 came along and there was room allocated in the directory space for longer filenames.
Then larger hard drives and FAT32 came along and there was room allocated in the directory space for longer filenames.
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Re: long file names, anyone know the history?
Originally posted by Eeyore
I recently spent some time with my old franklin ace (apple ][ clone) and had forgotten that apple's DOS supported long file names and file names with spaces even way back then. what were the reasons for having only 8 character names on PCs until windows 95?
I recently spent some time with my old franklin ace (apple ][ clone) and had forgotten that apple's DOS supported long file names and file names with spaces even way back then. what were the reasons for having only 8 character names on PCs until windows 95?
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Originally posted by X
I believe it was a carryover from CP/M (which MS-DOS came from) which only allowed 8 characters for the filename and 3 for the extension (FAT12 filesystem I think). I believe Windows 95 allowed long filenames because it made multiple directory entries as needed to handle the longer names (FAT16).
Then larger hard drives and FAT32 came along and there was room allocated in the directory space for longer filenames.
I believe it was a carryover from CP/M (which MS-DOS came from) which only allowed 8 characters for the filename and 3 for the extension (FAT12 filesystem I think). I believe Windows 95 allowed long filenames because it made multiple directory entries as needed to handle the longer names (FAT16).
Then larger hard drives and FAT32 came along and there was room allocated in the directory space for longer filenames.
check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT
http://www.maxframe.com/HISZMSD.HTM
http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Byte/History.html
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