From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net
In article ,
Scott Lurndal wrote:
>cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:
>>In article <20240722090730.00004866@gmail.com>,
>>John Ames wrote:
>>>On Mon, 22 Jul 2024 15:22:26 -0000 (UTC)
>>>cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wrote:
>>>> I can't think of any now for which that would be true. Maybe
>>>> DOS/VS or something?
>>>
>>>TENEX's six-character filename limit is the reason Colossal Cave
>>>Adventure is also known as ADVENT ;)
>>
>>Oh, I thought we were being specific to IBM mainframes,
>>which is almost certainly what the OP was talking about.
>>
>>ITS certainly had six-character filenames, as did TOPS-10 IIRC,
>>but TENEX had no such limit; consider the existence of
>>DIRECTORY, for instance. Certainly, any unreasonably
>>short name limit did not survive into TOPS-20.
>>
>>https://github.com/PDP-10/tenex/blob/master/pdf/TEN-SYS-2.pdf
>>suggests that the "primary name string" is of
>>"indefinite length".
>>
>>>> The idea of a PC operating system on a mainframe is silly.
>>>
>>>No argument there. But there's room in life for silliness.
>>
>>Indeed. I don't think OP is making that distinction, though.
>
>Agreed. Even the ANSI Magtape format had 17-character filenames
>back in the day. Some older Burroughs systems were limited to 12
>characters (six for pack/volume name and six for filename), but
>large systems (e.g. B6500 et al) had a longer limit.
>
>The original unix filesystem was limited to 14, IIRC.
Correct. Two bytes for the inode number, and 14 for
the filename, in a 16-byte directory entry. Fixed in
4BSD, where the 4.2 filesystem has a variable length
filename (up to 255 characters) and a "reclen" field
that points to the next (occupied) entry in any given
dir. Creating a new file in some directory basically
meant doing a first-fit search through the directory
file until one could find a suitably sized "slot".
Good times.
- Dan C.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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