Ahouxs.110
net.unix-wizards
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!npois!houxi!houxs!hansen
Thu Feb 11 10:31:56 1982
Re: long filenames
I've worked on two different systems which allowed considerably longer names
than the Unix system does (I was going to say 'than Unix does,' but I'm now
told *Unix* is an adjective, not a noun). After using them and losing them,
I find myself missing that feature tremendously.
Everytime I see a filename like mdep.c, I cringe. Does that name mean
machine dependent code.c, mother's favorite department stores.c, a medical
program dealing with drugs given in epsilon increments, or WHAT? I CAN'T
tell from the *filename*!
If I use some of the subsystems in common use around here, such as SCCS or
pack/unpack, I can't even use all 14 characters for the filenames. These
programs tack on their own prefix/suffix and now limit me to twelve
character names.
One comment about those systems: a person did have help from the system that
made it much, MUCH easier to deal with the longer filenames. Such features
as filename completion and filename prompting were available at the shell
level. (Actually at the exec or monitor level, depending on that particular
system's terminology). For filename completion, we hit the escape key and
the filename was completed out as far as possible. For filename prompting,
we hit the question mark key and a list of possible filenames appeared.
I have seen neither of these features in the standard Unix shell or cshell.
There are a number of home-grown "shells" floating around which have some of
these features, but, not being a supported product, they tend to be used by
only a few people or a couple of systems. Also, they tend to load down the
system because they have to be run in raw mode (without any support from the
tty driver), generally two to three times the size of sh or csh, and usually
don't have enough people using them to warrant having the shared-text bit
set.
I guess the things I'd like to see added to the Unix system are: 1) longer
file names, say ~30 characters long; and 2) support for them at the shell
level, giving both filename completion and filename prompting.
Tony Hansen
houxs!hansen
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