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Date:	Thu, 5 Apr 2001 15:06:58 -0400
Message-Id:	<200104051906.PAA14287@envy.delorie.com>
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From:	DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To:	jmerz42 AT earthlink DOT net
CC:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
In-reply-to:	<3ACCC15F.20606@earthlink.net> (message from Jonathon Merz on
	Thu, 05 Apr 2001 14:02:55 -0500)
Subject:	Re: OT pondering (WAS: Re: Trailing Periods on File Names)
References:	<4 DOT 3 DOT 1 DOT 2 DOT 20010405144831 DOT 021f9008 AT pop DOT ma DOT ultranet DOT com> <3ACCC15F DOT 20606 AT earthlink DOT net>

> I agree with that, having seen this before, but I am curious... It seems that 
> such functionality did not get there by accident (I cannot think of a way to 
> ignore characters in a filename without some _extra_ coding), so it must have 
> been done for some purpose.  Yet I cannot for the life of me imagine what 
> benefit this produces, or what fault it would circumvent.  Anyone have ideas 
> as to this?

Back in the old days, the filename and extension really used to be
handled separately.  FAT filesystems still store them separately.  If
a file didn't have an extension, some programs would concatenate a dot
and an empty string.  When MS-DOS parsed the filename, it used the dot
only to split the filename and extension, but ignored it otherwise.
Add in a touch of the usual Microsoft madness and I'm sure it will all
make sense.

On the other hand, people who cut-n-paste filenames from the ends of
sentences won't have troubles with the extraneous period ;-)

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