14 character limitation in filenames

Peter da Silva peter at ficc.ferranti.com
Sat Feb 2 07:03:00 AEST 1991


In article <1991Feb1.003532.15719 at NCoast.ORG> allbery at ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes:
> "Silliness"?  I still fail to understand why everyone wants to be able to
> create files with humongous names --- I don't enjoy typing 14 character file
> names (but don't want to decrease that size, there *is* a tradeoff here), the
> 30-plus-character names I've seen in use on some BSD systems don't appeal at
> all.

I find 14 a little limiting on occasion, but I've never run out of space
in the 30-character file names on AmigaOS. Since just doubling the size
of a directory entry would give you 30 character filenames, why bother with
complicated stuff like the BSD system?

And if you do go to a more complex form, why not do hashed directories or
trees and really get some speedup in namei?
-- 
Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter at ferranti.com
+1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"



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