14 character limitation in filenames

[Tom Fitzgerald]

> As quoted from peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva):
> +---------------
> | Since just doubling the size
> | of a directory entry would give you 30 character filenames, why bother with
> | complicated stuff like the BSD system?
> +---------------

Because just doubling the size of the directory entry would also waste lots
more space, and double the number of disk accesses it takes to search a
directory.  BSD directory entries often use *less* space than SysV, since
filenames are shorter than 8 characters often enough.  (Consider a whole
/usr/spool/news hierarchy frinstance).

allbery at NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes:
> We see eye to eye on this.  255 character file names are ridiculous; if my
> file name gets *that* long, as far as I'm concerned the file name is a file
> in itself.

Just because you can use 255 character filenames doesn't mean you *have*
to.  Sometimes real long filenames are useful, for document names (check
out the internet draft documents on an archive that has them) or for
multiple archived versions of things.  I'm tired of having to encode a
program name, version number, patchlevel and packaging info into 14
characters, but that's still better than creating a whole directory
hierarchy for one file.

I think BSD won with this one.  It's an old principle, don't impose *any*
unnecessary restrictions on the user.

---
Tom Fitzgerald   Wang Labs        fitz at wang.com
1-508-967-5278   Lowell MA, USA   ...!uunet!wang!fitz